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White v. Fresenius Medical Care12/12/2001
rose in August 1999, while, at trial, she stated that they probably arose before this time.
In written reasons, the workers' compensation judge explained:
This Court also finds the claimant injured her neck in her fall. The evidence shows that the pain in her neck began in August 1999, which would be about six weeks post accident. The claimant did not verbalize her neck pain and upper extremity numbness to a physician until July 2000. The evidence shows the claimant thought she slept wrong, and she was too concerned about her other health problems (hernia, back surgery, hysterectomy) to pay attention to the neck pain. It was not until her arm started going numb did she report her problems to Dr. Leoni. Dr. Leoni testified the if that a patient does not verbalize pain does not mean she is not experiencing it. Dr. Leoni testified if the claimant had neck pain within six weeks after her fall, that he would relate the problems in her neck to the fall. (Record citations omitted.)
At trial, the claimant testified that her neck complaints began before August 1999. When questioned regarding deposition testimony indicating that it did not begin until the month of August, the claimant testified as follows regarding the discrepancy complained of by FMC and her failure to report the injury to Dr. Leoni for a year after the accident:
Q: I'm not clear, and you may have said this and I just didn't catch it again, but your neck problems began in August sometime; is that correct, August of 1999?
A: No, I would say it was probably before August.
Q: Do you remember me asking you about when your neck problems began in your deposition back in November?
A: Honestly? No.
Q: On Page 38 of your deposition, at Line 23, I asked: "When did that neck pain first arise or become noticeable?"
You said: "I'm not certain. It was - - I don't know, maybe around in late August. I want to say sometime in August, probably August, the beginning of August." But now you recall it was closer to the time of the accident?
A: Okay. When I started experiencing problems with my neck, I experienced - - The process of pain, it started with one type; and it went into something else. Actually, the muscle pain, the muscular pain, and the pain that I had that ran like from - - through my neck, down into my shoulder, well, there was that type of pain which I had been - - I had - - I had previously been experiencing that. Then I kind of started with a little pain that started to radiate down further into my arm. And that pain got progressively worse, but I just probably never said anything about it until I noticed I started losing strength. And the pain got persistent because it would come and go. It didn't stay there all the time. But when it began to stay there all the time, I knew that it wasn't just muscle tension or a crick in the neck. So, actually, I experienced two different - - I mean, there was a different process of pain. And the first one, I probably would have never even considered that pain.
Again, the workers' compensation judge chose to credit Ms. White's testimony indicating a timely onset of pain and a reluctance to report to her physicians due to her failure to relate the pain to the accident and her optimism that the condition would resolve. Accepting this as true, and considering it in light of Dr. Leoni's testimony regarding the onset of symptoms, the workers' compensation judge's finding was not manifestly erroneous.
Prescription of Medical Benefits
By this assignment of error, FMC questions the workers' compensation judge's determination that Ms. White suffered from a
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