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Gail "MsHukk" Lepo
On October 5, 1995 I had a trip and fall at work. There really wasn't much to it. I worked in a warehouse, and I was the only female there. One of the guys I worked with left my drawer to my desk openn, and I tripped over it. At first, the only thing that I knew that was hurt was my leg. It was bleeding. No one was in the office when it happened. But from what the guys I worked with told me, all they heard was "OH SH--". My boss had me take his golfcart to the bathroom and clean my leg. He never sent me to the doctors or anything to be checked out. Well I kept getting headaches, and I was also having problems with my wrist. As time went on, my wrist kept getting worse and so did the headaches.

Well, May of the following year, I had my wrist checked out. They found it had torn cartilage. I've had the wrist operated on 4 times, and I'm still not finished. As for the headaches, every doctor kept telling me it was stress, and that I was having migraines. After a while, Worker's Comp allowed me to see a therapist for "pain management". During our sessions, she noticed things like, memory loss, word finding, and times where I would "space" out. So she suggested that I have a Psychological Exam done. Work Comp again agreed. Fortunately, the person doing the eval was a Neuropsychologist. As she was doing the eval, she also noticed these things. So, she took it a few steps further and did the eval for head injury. BINGO. Finally found why I was having all the headaches. Mind you this is now THREE years post injury. She sent me to have the MRI, EEG, and SPECT scan done. MRI was fine. The SPECT scan showed damage to the left frontal lobe. and the EEG showed seizure activity.

It really is nice to be able to figure out why all these things were happening to me. But unfortunately, Work Comp doesn't feel they are responsible, and have been fighting me every step of the way. The only good thing in all of this, is my husband. He has been such a great support. He has made sure that I don't have to worry about anything but getting well. Hopefully one day when my head and hand are fixed, I can go back to work.

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