Badass or dumbass?
I have a restraining order against me.
A leading rehabilitation hospital, their lawyer, a physical therapist, a hospital department, the director of that department, a hospital compliance officer, and an insurance representative have a restraining order against me. In addition, a fitness blogger and my lawyer asked me to cease communication with them.
It’s a long story, so I’ll tell it in parts, and** I am afraid of getting sued, so I will only state facts I can prove.
I had gone to a medical facility to deal with a running injury I could run through, and came out with a different injury than I had ever had. The physical therapist advised me over email. After 6 months of this, and them telling me they’d help, I told them I was going someplace else. The director of that department sent a certified letter to me to state that they would no longer be in contact with me. She listed 3 physical therapists near my home to call for treatment, and I was put in contact with their compliance officer.
The compliance officer ran an investigation, and I was reimbursed for part of the costs for non-medical expenses. I asked to get money back for medical expenses related to my injury and, in my opinion, the depression that had developed as a result. For this to be considered, I had to go through their insurance process. A month later, I received a letter from their lawyer, who advised me that I should communicate through her and their insurance representative only. I reluctantly released my medical information to their insurance company, they [lost it, sent new forms to me I did not receive, 2 weeks later sent 2 new sets of forms to me to replace them, I filled out the information again and sent the information to them and they] sent it to their chosen expert in the field, and [several months later] it was determined that the standard of care was met, so I was not reimbursed.
My interaction with the insurance process took over 9 months, during which I sent hundreds of emails to all parties involved trying to get information and answers. The lawyer would only communicate with me through written letter, and the insurance representative was difficult and slow to deal with. I told them I would not hire a lawyer, and, in an effort to buffer myself from the situation, I found out that no lawyer would take this case on a contingency basis.*
It was very stressful, running was my main coping mechanism and I had lost that 6 months prior to receiving the letter from the center director. They provoked me, for example, by setting up a mock website that they took down after obtaining the temporary restraining order. In her affidavit, the lawyer took email statements out of context, listed incomplete or false information, and suggested I was a stalker in order to obtain the preliminary restraining order at the court in my absence.
At the court date set by the judge to decide on a preliminary injunction, I [left for the courthouse directly from a women’s leadership event at work where I had been invited to speak and] defended myself. It was very scary. For example, I didn’t know where or when to stand during the proceedings. I brought documentation with me, but I didn’t know I had to bring a copy for the plaintiff and the judge (the judge kindly let us take a break so I could make photocopies in the law library). I admitted to the judge, who was extremely kind to me during this time, that I had sent many emails, but I am not a threat, and that I did have trouble avoiding the plaintiff’s social media accounts. My therapist later determined that I had developed a compulsive disorder in response to the anxiety I had experienced while dealing with these processes for such a long time. The judge chose to make a decision outside of court after reviewing all of the information (she was not the same judge who issued the temporary restraining order). Her decision was to award the preliminary injunction, and I was to return to court 6 months later for a conference with the judge.
Two days after my court appearance, I went to see the nurse who was helping me with my medication. It had been a couple of months since I had seen her. I told her that it had been a bad week, because on Monday I got a restraining order. She said she knew, because somebody had called my primary care physician to let her know, and my doctor contacted her to check in with me. That hurt.
Interestingly, following that, I contacted one of the offices in charge of releasing my medical records to find out if all of my medical records had been released to the hospital’s insurance company. They still had unfulfilled requests in process for my medical record, including with my primary care physician, even though my complete record, which would contain all information regarding my injury, had been sent to them prior. I suspect they were trying to obtain a record listing information related to the restraining order and my mental health. I immediately sent in a request to block further medical history releases.
Two weeks later, my Yelp review was hidden from their site. There is harassment legalese on Yelp that makes me think they had a motive to obtain a restraining order, but I’m not sure.
*A dear friend, who is a lawyer and has family in medicine, told me that the system is a machine, and I am lucky that a lawyer wouldn’t take my case. This is an understatement.
**Although it was therapeutic for me to write this post, I will leave my remaining issues related to this story unwritten as to maintain the focus of this blog as an injured runner support group. I remain ashamed, hurt, frustrated… This story and post are other informative discriptions of abuses of power by institutions.
Runner, Interrupted 