Personal Injury and Social Security Disability Blog

Friday Fun

Here's a Web site that's bound to be controversial because it offers such a huge potential for misuse. At RottenNeighbor.com you can report any of your neighbors yo don't like (or any that you do like). The goal apparently is to warn home buyers before they make a purchase. I'm sure you'll find some interesting comments if you look around. Here's the explanation from the site:

RottenNeighbor.com is here to help. It's the first real estate search engine of its kind, helping you find troublesome neighbors before you sign the paperwork on your new house, condo or apartment. RottenNeighbor is the largest site anywhere in the world covering the neighbor space, and we're certain you'll agree that the value it offers is unmatched anywhere else!

Use RottenNeighbor to:

• Get access to detailed maps of states, counties, cities and neighborhoods, all searchable by zip code
• Find important neighborhood information by searching the site's user-provided data
• Help others by uploading your own good or rotten neighbors to our database

Whether you're moving down the street or across the country, we want you to be aware of bad neighbors before you relocate. Buying a home is one of the biggest investments you will make, and we are here to provide more peace of mind. Real estate agents can also use RottenNeighbor as a tool to market their services and feel more secure about the homes they show to their clients.

Lightning Safety Tips

This is Lightning Safety Week in the United States. Here are a few tips on lightning safety from the National Weather Service Web site:

In the United States, there are an estimated 25 million lightning flashes each year. During the past 30 years, lightning killed an average of 62 people per year. This ties the average of 62 deaths per year caused by tornadoes. Yet because lightning usually claims only one or two victims at a time and does not cause mass destruction of property, it is underrated as a risk. While documented lightning injuries in the United States average about 300 per year, undocumented injuries likely much higher.

      Watch for Developing Thunderstorms: Thunderstorms are most likely to develop on spring or summer days but can occur year round. As the sun heats the air, pockets of warmer air start to rise and cumulus clouds form. Continued heating can cause these clouds to grow vertically into towering cumulus clouds, often the first sign of a developing thunderstorm.

      An Approaching Thunderstorm: When to Seek Safe Shelter: Lightning can strike as far as 10 miles from area where it is raining. That's about the distance you can hear thunder. If you can hear thunder, you are within striking distance. Seek safe shelter immediately.

    Outdoor Activities: Minimize the Risk of Being Struck: Most lightning deaths and injuries occur in the summer. Where organized outdoor sports activities take place, coaches, camp counselors and other adults must stop activities at the first roar of thunder to ensure everyone time to get a large building or enclosed vehicle. Leaders of outdoors events should have a written plan that all staff are aware of and enforce.

    Indoor Activities: Things to Avoid: Inside building, stay off corded phones, computers and other electrical equipment that put you in direct contact with electricity. Stay away from pools, indoor or outdoor, tubs, showers and other plumbing. Buy surge suppressors for key equipment. Install ground fault protectors on circuits near water or outdoors. When inside, wait 30 minutes after the last strike, before going out again.

      Helping a Lightning Strike Victim: If a person is struck by lightning, call 911 and get medical care immediately. Cardiac arrest and irregularities, burns, and nerve damage are common in cases where people are struck by lightning. However, with proper treatment, including CPR if necessary, most victims survive a lightning strike. You are in no danger helping a lightning victim. The charge will not affect you.

      Summary: Lightning is dangerous. With common sense, you can greatly increase your safety and the safety of those you are with. At the first clap of thunder, go a large building or fully enclosed vehicle and wait 30 minutes after the last clap of thunder to back outside.

When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!

Featured Link - Bursitis.org

Bursitis alone is generally not sufficiently disabling to allow someone to receive Social Security disability benefits. However, many of our disability clients do suffer from bursitis, along with other ailments and conditions. The Web site Bursitis.org has good information about the causes of and treatments for bursitis. Here is a part of the site's information. Visit the site for more.

Bursitis.org

Bursitis information and
treatment options

 

How Bursitis Occurs

The bursa is what cushions the tendon and thereby helps prevent friction between the tendon and the bone.  Unfortunately, constant rubbing of the tendon over the bone with high amounts of repetitive arm, shoulder, hip, knee and ankle motion can lead to enough friction of the bursa itself to cause the inflammation and irritation of the bursa called bursitis.  For example, a person who throws a ball too many times at one interval may begin to cause this friction process in the shoulder or elbow.  Another way that bursitis occurs is when compression of the bursa happens on a regular basis, such as a side sleeper who places a lot of shoulder or hip pressure when they lay down for long periods.  In this case it would not take too much movement of this already compressed area to cause friction of the bursa.

Bursitis Symptoms

Symptoms can vary from an achy pain and stiffness to the local area of the joint, to a burning that surrounds the whole joint around the inflamed bursa. With this condition, the pain is usually worse during and after activity, and the bursa and surrounding joint area can become stiffer the following day.

Bursitis Treatment

With proper care for the area, the pain in the bursa should lessen over three weeks, but it should be noted that the healing of the area continues and doesn't even peak until at least six weeks following the initial injury.  This is due to scar tissue formation, which initially acts like the glue to bond the tissue back together.  Scar tissue will continue to form past six weeks in some cases and as long as a year in severe cases.  After 6 months this condition is considered chronic and much more difficult to treat. The initial approach to treating a bursitis is to support and protect the bursa by bracing any areas of the tendon that are being pulled on during use, as this will help stop bursa friction from occurring. It is important to loosen up the tendons, lessen the pain, minimize any bursa inflammation, and reduce the compression that can occur with lying down or sitting.

After the scar tissue has begun to accumulate, it will be important to perform procedures which help break down the scar tissue in the tendon tissue, so as to let the tendon and muscle regain it's normal flexibility and lessen the chance of further injury.  While exercise is appropriate for breaking down scar tissue once the area has healed, it may further irritate the area during the initial stages.  Therefore, other methods that can be performed by your healthcare provider, such as ultrasound and massage, may be safely used to accomplish this early on in the injury. Ultrasound uses sound waves that vibrate a such a fast level, that it cannot be felt with normal use.  Ultrasound will cause an increase in circulation to the tissue and soften the scar tissue to allow it to further break down.  Ultrasound can also be used as phonophoresis to help topical pain and nutrient solutions reach further down into the tissues by transporting them with the sound waves.  Light stretches may also be performed if they do not cause any further irritation to the area.   

Bursitis Prevention

Prevention of this condition requires stretching the muscle on a regular basis and thereby lengthening the tendon connections around the bursa. This will allow less friction to the tendon/bursa/bone connection.  As mentioned previously, reducing the compression with sitting or lying down is crucial for helping to keep the bursa from losing its natural lubrication and allowing the bursa friction to occur more readily.  When bursitis does occur, it is important to treat it immediately, and thereby prevent it from reaching a stage that is more severe.

Social Security’s New Homepage

I received this announcement today from the Social Security Administration:

Social Security’s New Homepage

Social Security has redesigned its homepage to make it more welcoming and user- friendly.  The new page is cleaner, easier to navigate and makes better use of graphics.

While the look of our homepage has changed, the web addresses have not.  Favorite sites that you and other frequent users have bookmarked will not change.

See for yourself how easy it is to use at www.socialsecurity.gov.

Adding Insult To Injury At The Workplace

This is a guest post from Heather Johnson. Ms. Johnson is a regular commentator on the subject of criminal justice careers. She welcomes your feedback and potential job inquiries at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

What do you do when the job that provides a livelihood turns out to be the poison that’s slowly draining your life? What do you do when you’re rendered an invalid in the blink of an eye because your employers turned a blind eye to safety norms? Injuries and illnesses incurred at the workplace or in connection with work are commonplace, but what’s not common is the readiness of employers to pay out compensation.

Occupational hazards like prolonged exposure to toxic substances, repetitive work movements and noise and air pollution give rise to a number of illnesses like cancer, cardiac and obstructive lung diseases, asthma, musculoskeletal disorders, skin diseases, hearing loss and vibration-related diseases. Jobs that are by nature hazardous lead to severe injuries, lifelong disabilities and even loss of life.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sets and regulates safety measures that employers must comply with at the workplace or be subject to heavy fines during routine inspections. In spite of this, establishments have been found to be shirking their responsibilities towards their employees in two ways when it comes to both illnesses and injuries that originate at the workplace.

•    Injuries are being downplayed: A recent missive to OSHA from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine lays bare the tactics employers use to downplay the seriousness of injuries sustained at the workplace. Doctors are concerned that their ethics are being compromised when employers force them to “under-treat and mistreat”, according to Dr. Robert McLellan, president of the organization. Most of the doctors belonging to this group work for the employers; their grouse is that most establishments are taking the crooked way out to keep safety regulators from their doors and asking doctors to skip recording injuries that require time off from work or treatment beyond first aid. Those who demur find that their services are not sought anymore. Most companies require their injured employees to see doctors that they recommend. The pressure from safety regulators to improve working conditions and the costs associated with compensating injured workers and losses due to time away from work are the reasons for this unethical behavior from employers.

•    Illnesses are difficult to prove as having their origins at the workplace: Cancer and other work-related illnesses manifest only after prolonged periods of exposure to hazards, both known and unknown. By the time the symptoms of the disease start to show, it’s often too late in most cases – cancers become malignant and life-threatening while other illnesses lead to lifelong disabilities that affect the ability of the individual to work effectively. Employers, when faced with cases that demand compensation for mental and physical agony, pain and stress suffered because of occupational hazards, are more intent on saving their skins rather than taking care of the rehabilitation needs of the employees who have been affected. The onus of having to prove that the illness is a direct result of conditions at the workplace rests with the employee, and with the establishment fighting back in order to avoid a bad reputation and millions of dollars in pay outs, it’s more often than not a losing battle.

The best course of action to follow when you are injured or fall ill due to a work-related hazard is to call a lawyer and discus your case at the earliest.

Friday Fun

I used to love to play Boggle. Here's a simple online version.

Featured Link - DriverSide.com

Driverside.com is an interesting, and potentially very useful Web site. It's in beta testing now, but seems to be working well. You enter your car's make and model, and the Web site will give you tons of information —everything from current value to maintenance schedules. They even have scanned copies of owners' manuals. Check it out. Here's their description:

About DriverSide:

DriverSide is a vast resource for all drivers. We want to make buying, selling, and owning vehicles easier and more rewarding. We feel like owning a car can be complicated and we are here to help.

While there certainly are other places to get help on purchasing a vehicle, we wonder how interested the other guys are in helping out once their commission has been collected. We are different. We will bring you every resource, eliminate every fee, direct you to other websites (even if you leave ours,) and help you in any way we can. Our mission is to be as helpful as we can and to always be on the side of the driver!

DriverSide is located in San Francisco and was founded by three veteran internet entrepreneurs. DriverSide's editorial and production staff have long histories in the automotive space and come from places like KBB, Yahoo! Autos, Microsoft, Tesla Motors and other websites we like and respect! DriverSide is a private company and is venture financed.

Featured Link - Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary Online

My thanks to my friend Matt Homann for this site — the Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary Online. It's a dictionary that not only gives you definitions, but also illustrations of terms or concepts. Take a look, for example, at the definition of the word court. Very cool.

We Must Protect Patients' Rights

This letter to the editor was published in the online version of the Wall Street Journal today

A few years back, insurance lobbyists rammed through legal changes that were designed to severely limit the legal rights of Texas patients. We heard high-falutin' rhetoric promising dramatic improvements in the cost, quality and access of health care in our state. None of the promised improvements have been realized, but that hasn't stopped special interest think tanks from spinning an intricate yarn in their futile attempt to justify the rights they stole from Texas families ("Cross Country: Why Doctors Are Heading for Texas," May 17 and "Tort Reform Will Rescue Doctors," Letters, June 6).

What has really happened? 1) Health-care costs have risen dramatically in Texas, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; 2) AMA statistics show that we rank lower in per-capita physicians today than we did just a few years ago; 3) Rural and underserved areas continue to struggle to attract new physicians; 4) Texas continues to have the nation's highest rate of uninsured.

The reality is that none of this has been or ever will be fixed by taking away the legal rights of patients or their families. Unless we move beyond the insurance industry's talking points and enact real reforms that protect patients, strengthen safety standards and restore accountability, we will continue to be plagued by an inadequate health-care system that does more for insurance companies than it does for patients.

N. Alex Winslow
Executive Director
Texas Watch
Austin, Texas

Social Security Recipients Can Get Their Monthly Payments On Debit Cards

As reported in the Dallas Morning News today, the Social Security Administration is going to make life a little easier, and cheaper, for Social Security recipients. As the system stands now, recipients of retirement or Social Security disability benefits can get their monthly payments directly deposited electronically into their bank accounts. But those who don't have bank accounts still must deal with paper checks from the government. Unfortunately, this frequently means having to pay a check-cashing service each month, thereby reducing the net amount the recipient gets.

But beginning this week in Texas and several other states, Social Security recipients will have the option of receiving their benefits on a debit card. This means they won't have to pay anyone to cash their monthly checks. Here are excerpts from the story:

The government is introducing the Direct Express program in Texas and nine other states this week and will roll it out nationwide by October. Dallas-based Comerica Bank will issue the debit MasterCards.

The program is targeted toward the 4 million Social Security and Supplemental Security Income recipients without a bank.

"Direct Express should appeal to them because it eliminates the risk of checks getting lost or stolen in the mail, and it gives people access to their money without having to carry around a lot of cash," said Treasury official Judith Tillman.

Cardholders can make purchases, pay bills and get cash at thousands of ATMs and retail locations, she said.

"Our beneficiaries have paid an average of $6, and sometimes as much as $20, at check-cashing services," Ms. Tillman said. "So they should like the fact that they can use their card for little or no cost."