The sun is out this morning. The day is bright, the sky clear, the snow blinding. For the past two months there has been no sun, the entire city imprisoned within an austere cave of winter dark. On scattered afternoons narrow beams slipped through the shifting clouds, burnishing the earth with scant seconds of light before the clouds cemented out the sky and the snow thickened once again.
After writing the foregoing I left the house for a prolonged walk in the sun.
On my return I found a letter from the insurance company. The letter advised that I had a deadline of March 14th to submit any additional documentary evidence in support of my claim. I will not see Dr N again until March 5th. This gives a window of less than 10 days to submit Dr N’s findings to the insurance company and provides no opportunity for any follow up investigation if this should be required.
My past experience of the Québec health system is that I must wait a year to see a specialist. This is the time required before I was able to see Dr X, a neurologist. For the past two years I have been registered on a gouvernment de Québec website to obtain access to a GP with no response as of yet (I was able to access Dr N via means best described as unorthodox).
My prediction is that the insurance company findings will result in a rejection of my claim. My logic for this is as follows. If the insurer found my claim to be valid based on all the evidence supplied to them to date then there is nothing to inhibit them from contacting me and advising the claim as been accepted. There is absolutely no reason to wait for the claimant to submit additional material which further strengthens a claim the insurer already finds to be valid.
The only reason to provide an opportunity to submit additional evidence is because all of the existing evidence submitted to the insurance company is deemed insufficient to support my claim.
When I followed this logical chain and arrived at the above conclusion I felt I had been kicked in the gut. I have grown used to this feeling.
Despite undertaking an 8k walk along snow choked pathways, I found myself unable to sleep last night. I was up until 0400 trying to understand my situation and how to address it. On these sleepless nights I feel I am trying to grapple with an elusive something that I cannot fully encompass, which I cannot fully grip. I do not know how to put this state of mind into words. This wide awake, sleepless, introspection is something first experienced in January / February of last year when I encountered great difficulties in undertaking a trans-Canada newsletter project. I was unable to fully comprehend that event. My only glimmer of understanding was that things were going badly wrong and, although I tried very hard, I was unable to put things right, or even come to a complete understanding of events.
Last night was similar. Four or five hours of trying to get my head around a situation I appear unable to fully comprehend. The day is bright. But the night sees the return of darkness.