tied up

I have been a bit tied up lately. Even after a summer of wearing a tie on a semi-regular basis, it still took me four tries yesterday to get it right. first it was too short and that little small tail was hanging down below the tip. Then I over-compensated and the tie was hanging down three inches below my belt line. The fourt attempt was far from perfect, but I figured I was just going to sit behind the desk in my office all day and no one was really going to see me so it didn't matter that much. I had already spent enough time tied up with it. Some of the other difficult moments of my summer of personal injury? Trying to track down how medical records from ambulance services. I was somewhat shocked to learn that almost no one keeps track of which ambulance company drives you to the hospital. The hospitals do not keep a record of it. Their liability begins when you show up at their front door. How you got there is irrelevant. Our clients rarely know more than that they traveled in an ambulance, but you can hardly blame them. Also, since most of our clients don't speak English, I can't just call them up and ask. We do have paralegals to do that sort of stuff and I do take advantage of both their labor and their langauge skills, but the downside is that you can't ask the questions and they rarely get all the information you might need. If you try calling the fire departments in the area where the accident took place you will go in so many circles you will think you just spun down a fire pole into the flames of bureaucratic hell. You might get lucky and have a police report in the file so that you can call their central dispatch. They seem to have the best idea of what ambulance might have been dispatched on the particular day of the accident. By this point you have spent an hour tracking down a $700 bill which the insurance companies will rarely dispute but might result in the ambulance company becoming aware that your client is still alive and has not paid his bill. I sometimes wonder if it is worth all the effort when they think Juan Lopez has already moved back to Mexico. If I am lucky, my day might also include some telephone negotiations with an insurance adjuster or an opportunity to write one a letter telling him/her how ridiculous his/her offer is. And if I have anything to say from my brief experience with insurance adjusters, it is this: just like with any other group of people, some are pleasant, some are jerks, some are ignorant, some, unfortunately for my purposes, are quite bright, and finally, you often get what you pay for. So if you are insured by Geiko, think about switching.