WomenCo.

For me personally, I lost my medical career due to a work injury which required 7 surgeries and 5 years to recuperate from. I have tried the very honest approach which essentially flagged me as a high risk work comp case. I also tried a different approach which documented the continued education I accomplished during those years I couldn't work. This is risky as well because due to how work comp laws are written...you aren't supposed to be well enough to go to school while on disability. It is a catch 20/20 thing. Once you are injured on the job then on disability, they make it virtually impossible to move forward (for those of us that are NOT okay with life on disability) and actually WANT to work. Then add to this that I did receive training in another field (HR) two years after my injury, and since I was not allowed to actually work while on disability...I did free consulting in HR in order to gain experience in my new field. When they pull my financials they see no recordable income for the years I gave away my expertise, which they interpret as I must not have done anything with enough merit to be paid for. To further complicate things my "valuable" education I received while serving my country in the United States Air Force over twenty years ago, which is equivalent to a bachelors degree in radiology sciences...is typically viewed as not an actual degree by most companies and hospitals. When writing letters to my congressman, senators, the military education department, and a couple more agencies--I was told that nothing could be done to change this misinterpretation. This totally astounds me. I worked very hard for that degree! With so many of our young people being pulled into promising careers via military training now during this very dangerous time to be in the military it seems fraudulent to have the military represent the training as equivalent to a degree when they allow companies and some colleges to decide that for themselves. I have been medically released to work and at this point I am beginning to feel that no matter how hard I WANT to work, nobody will hire me. I have gone back to school to work on my master’s degree at CSU...and they took my military degrees after much documentation and headaches. I am hoping that I can represent that I want to work so much so that I am pushing to further my education to prepare for it. I bit of irony...I am considered 90% disabled in both arms...which is worth a mere $69.50 a month for the rest of my life. I simply cannot live on this. Social Security denies me full benefits because in their opinion I should be able to get "some kind of job" but they do not offer any assistance in finding that illusive job. I do want to work as it is not my nature to "exist" but at this point I feel a victim of the system and I hate that. The last position I applied for I took another approach, offering them an opportunity to fill the requirements for diversity and disabled employees by hiring me. I had done research and found they had just been given a tremendous amount of fines for noncompliance in these issues. I was told that I was not considered disabled enough to fill the need. Criminey! I am fully functional, with the only limitation of no push-pull-lift anything over 20 lbs....but I am offically 90% disabled in both arms. I am so frustrated. I miss my medical career tremendously---but physically I cannot go back to that. My masters degree will be in mediation law---which I recently I discovered that most employers must be "sold" the idea that mediation is a skill we use all the time in dealing with clients and services, and that it is a valable skill for anyone is upper management. I want a job---and I am a hard worker. I guess I am looking for an employer that can see me as an asset more than a liability but unfortunatley the government and the work comp laws seem to slice me out of the competition. Anyone have any ideas to help me with this?

What happened to integrity?? How desperate have we become that we have to lie about who we are?