Employee is entitled to temporary total disability benefits to cover healing periods to be paid prior to the time when the employee can return to work, her condition stabilizes, or her condition has reached a point of maximum medical progress. Schuster v. Division of Employment Security, 972 S.W.2d 377, 381 (Mo. App. E.D. 1998).
Employee last worked on Friday, September 10, 2004. She checked into the emergency room on September 12, 2004, and ultimately underwent surgery to address her clostridium difficile. It was necessary to remove most of her colon and create an opening to which she has to attach external bags to collect intestinal waste. Employee was sufficiently stable to leave the hospital on September 23, 2004. On March 28, 2005, the following notations are found in employee's medical chart: " 6 mo po total colectomy, colostomy working good . . . . 'I think l'll leave it like it is' stoma fine."
Therefore, we conclude that employer/insurer are liable for temporary total disability benefits from September 12, 2004, through March 28, 2005. The parties stipulated that the appropriate compensation rate is $\ 229.69 per week.
[T]he term "total disability" is defined as the inability to return to any employment and not merely the inability to return to the employment in which the employee was engaged at the time of the accident. It does not require that the claimant be completely inactive or inert. To determine if claimant is totally disabled, the central question is whether, in the ordinary course of business, any employer would reasonably be expected to hire claimant in his present physical condition.
Pavia v. Smitty's Supermarket, 118 S.W.3d 228, 234 (Mo. App. S.D. 2003) (internal citations omitted).
Since the time of employee's release from the hospital, she has been subject to recurring stomach pain, lack of sleep, and depression; becomes easily fatigued and requires frequent periods of rest; has to change colostomy bags approximately every hour or two; cannot lift weights over five or ten pounds; requires help cleaning her house; must be careful not to traumatize, inflame, or infect her surgically created ileostomy; and has not worked.
Employee's medical expert and her vocational expert testified that claimant can no longer perform manual labor, that she has no typing or computer skills, that she completed only ninth grade and has no GED; and that she is a poor candidate for re-training. They testified that as an employee, she would tend to be irritable and unreliable. Based on this evidence, we conclude that employee is permanently and totally disabled and that employer/insurer are liable for permanent total disability benefits beginning March 29, 2005, at the stipulated compensation rate of $\ 229.69 per week.