Hi I’m Brian Wiklendt with Garfinkel Schwartz I’m here in the parking lot of my Maitland
office which is in Maitland Florida near Orlando.
Just getting back from Buffalo had a good trip there.
Enjoyed the scenery it was nice there.
Got a lotta work to do catch up so that I can have a good weekend.
I’m now heading upstairs hoping that my paralegal Doreen will be there.
She typically gets there before me anyway.
I hope things went smoothly when I was gone.
Looking forward to working hard and getting a good weekend in.
We’ve got some work to do on a Friday.
So we’re here in the back offices where it’s nice and quiet.
Get a lot of work done that way.
Thank you for calling bye bye.
Good morning how are you?
Good how are you.
Good.
Buffalo went well.
Did you hold down the fort while I was gone.
Glad I got that trip out of the way.
I think what we’re in store for next week I think San Diego is that right next week?
I think so yeah.
Ok.
Did you get any documentation from the client?
I did.
We can sort through it a little bit later.
We’ll get settled, go through the paperwork that came in and the phone calls that you
want me to return and then go forward from there.
OK sounds good.
Phone’s already ringing.
That’s the way it is.
I filed that documentation and I just got a call already from the Department of Labor.
Oh, that fast?
Right, right.
What’d they say?
They wanted something a little more substantial.
They need something signed by opposing counsel agreeing to that figure.
Well yeah, opposing counsel did say in an email that she was going to do that today.
So we did what we needed to do for the client.
All right well thanks for keeping up with that one.
That client actually is coming into town from Missouri so we’ll be able to meet with him
in person.
That’s kind of nice.
He’ll come into the office and take a little tour.
But anyway what I would like to share with everyone out there is what I’ve seen since
the last time I’ve done a video which is kind of long ago, I wish I could have done
more, but certain things have come up.
I’m sure they haven’t just come up I’m sure they’ve been going on since in memoriam.
But I’m now experiencing insurance companies sending people to remote countries to get
treatment before they come back home and they see these quote doctors that we have trouble
getting records from.
And some of these doctors have some mind blowing things to say.
Mainly there’s always something going on that has to do with fibromyalgia, sleep apnea
any generalized thing that they can get aways with saying that’s not necessarily the injury
that the actual person is suffering from.
We get a lot of fibromyalgia, we get stomach bug, unknown stomach bugs where the person
must have fallen down the steps or fallen into a hole because they were dizzy because
of stomach bugs.
Other things the words PTSD doesn’t want to be used in those other countries, they
always say that they must be suffering from some depression because of family issues,
financial problems, anything but going overseas and seeing horrible things happen.
Another funny one that I saw when I say sleep apnea that’s just obviously a general term
as to why you can’t breathe.
So it’s not because you have respiratory failure because you ingested all these fumes
and sandstorm debris and chemicals, it’s just sleep apnea, COPD, unknown why you can’t
breathe all of a sudden.
I even got one chronic obesity syndrome that’s why this person had a certain kind of kidney
failure.
It wasn’t because of his service overseas it was because of chronic obesity syndrome
which that was a new one for me I had to look it up.
Those few things I wanted to bring it up because it’s weighing on my mind especially since
my trip in Buffalo and seeing what these insurance companies are trying to do to even if it’s
not an out and out denial it’s jus to delay these things for as long as possible.
So that we finally can prove to them that these are not weird chronic symptoms that
these people are going through.
It’s more like a traumatic event like a fall or a bombing or a shooting or inborn
debris in the air, it’s not any of these things that they label.
And we fight every day trying to get medical records and getting your doctors—a first
choice physician—of your choosing that is under the law that you’re entitled to even
if they deny it to make sure that we get a proper diagnosis of what really actually happened
and why, and why it’s related to your employment.
So those are the things that were weighing on my mind, I wanted to try to get it out
there.
So if anyone has any of these issues or problems.
So if someone diagnoses you with some fibromyalgia thing and you fell and hurt your back while
you were walking over rocks, we’ll help you out, get you to the right people, get
you diagnosed and find out what’s really wrong with you and take it from there.
So we’re always working.
Doreen’s always here.
She takes the calls when I’m gone and we have a direct line and it’s a secured line
so please feel free to contact us no one’s going to hear it.
The 800 number is there for your use.
Otherwise if you e-mail us everything is privileged and confidential.
And we’ll get back to you and we can give you my cell phone number or another number
and we get back to people within 24 hours, that’s just our policy no matter where I
am.
I can at least text or email you when I’m on the road.
So it’s exciting stuff going on but I know there’s a lot of things going on overseas
that are going got require a lot of civilian contractors to go into harm’s way again.
And we’re ready for it.
And we just are excited to help and we just love to do our jobs.
And it is Friday and everyone’s saying happy Friday and we still have some several more
hours to put in until we can say happy Friday.
Again this is Brian Wiklendt, I’m lead counsel at Garfinkel Schwartz, we help injured civilian
contractors overseas and longshoremen and that’s all we do.
And again signing out from our Maitland Florida office happy to be home and sleeping in my
own bed tonight.
Signing off, thank you.