With all of the information laid out before him, Brandon read pages upon pages of all of the information that we requested from the Freedom of Information Act, as well as my medical records. He found their game plans of what they planned on trying to knock off their list of agreed upon treatments and medications. He also found all of the threats that were said to be policy, and found there to be no back ups and no policy.
But the biggest thing that he found was that my doctor signed the dotted line of a letter that the car insurance company drummed up, which stated that none of my physiotherapy, massage therapy, pain medications were medically beneficial and that I would no longer be getting these services covered. Talk about a massive blow. Everything that we fought so hard for and battled out with the lawyers and had agreed upon, gone and undone all due to this lazy doctor that didn't give two hoots about me. There were curse words involved when Brandon sat me down and broke the news to me. And many, many tears. It felt like a massive betrayal from someone that I trusted. I had been prewarned by my physiotherapist that this could happen and how easily they can coerce medical professionals on the phone. It didn't make any sense as I had specialists notes backing me from recent reassessments that I was making progress, a big progress report done up by my physiotherapist, and many more notes from other medical professionals. Brandon had to talk me down and talk it through with me, "They obviously didn't get this letter signed ethically because they haven't brought it up to us AND they still are paying for your treatments regardless of their threats." His reasoning helped me, but oh boy, was I livid with my doctor and was ready to give him a piece of my mind! I think that being lied to on top of the stupid letter was what really got me, because I asked numerous times if there was anything that came from his conversations with the insurance company and he always said that he couldn't remember. I flippin still needed to play nice to my family doctor because I needed things from him as it's near impossible to get a doctor these days. I had a phone call appointment with him not long after our discovery and the first thing he said to me on the phone was, "I'm surprised to hear from you. I thought you fired me." It took everything, I mean everything, to not get nasty to him or question him and bring up the letter but I didn't. I grinned and bared it. Even still to this day, he has not told me about the letter and we have not discussed it. But mark my words, there will come a day where it will be!
On top of all of this news, in the FOI ( freedom of information) portal, we found the exact doctor (IME) that they had planned on sending me to, as well as the date and clinic. I had a panic attack. These meetings are not just little check ups, they are three hour long interrogations with specific agendas and when you have someone like me that has had to see a gazillion doctors over the years, the extreme dread and anxiety becomes too overwhelming and too much for me to handle.
Once we got switched to another claims specialist (yet again), she told us that they couldn't get a date with the doctor in Victoria ( the one we found out about in the FOI) and that they were really struggling to find an IME willing to even see me, but that they finally found one in Vancouver. Brandon found this to be too fishy and so he decided to call up the clinic in Victoria and ask about the next available date to see this particular IME and the cost for the appointment. Lo and Behold, they had dates within a week and many more, the starting cost would be $5,000 for a three hour appointment, but if certain things were required and added, it would be upwards of around $7,000 and more. I found this to be maddening as these payments could be put towards my care and were wasted on bullying tactics instead.
We refused to sign over my medical rights and records to the car insurance company ( we learned this the hard way when I first got in my accident) which pissed them off. They claimed they needed everything brought to my appointment and if I didn't bring my records, then we were deliberately going against policy and would be immediately cut off. We got legal advice and were told it wasn't law but that it would make things easier and smoother on us to partially comply and bring records that were directly related to my car accident and recent. We were so tired of the made up games and wished they would tire from messing around with us, and just do what was right.
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