The Employee testified that she currently resides in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. She is a single person and has two grown children neither of which lives at home. She was born on October 1, 1954, and was 58 years of age at the time of the hearing. She attended Chaffee High School through the eleventh grade and quit because she was pregnant. She later completed her GED in approximately 1975 in the State of Arkansas. She has not received any vocational training or college courses.
She went to work when her children were approximately the ages of four and six. She first worked as a waitress in 1975 through 1976 for about one year in the State of Arkansas. She moved back to Missouri in about 1976 and went to work at the Thorngate factory in Cape Girardeau in about 1978. She was a full-time seamstress. From 1978 to 1984, she went to work at Bohannes, which is a cleaning service. There she worked as a tailor. From 1985 through
1988, she worked at the Venture store in retail, as the assistant customer service manager. From 1988 to 1990, she moved to the State of Texas. From 1990 through 1994, she was back in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and worked at the Rapco plant in Fruitland, Missouri in cable production. In approximately 1994 or 1995, she worked at Custom Design Interiors in their sewing department. She worked there for approximately six months. From 1994 through 1996, she again worked at Major Custom Cable doing cable production work including soldering. From 1996 through 1998, she worked at Quantum, which is another cable producer. In 2001, she began working at Campbell Mattress in Cape Girardeau and worked there until October 2010. During that time she performed all the factory's positions in manufacturing mattresses. In October 2010, she took a job at the Radio Shack in sales with the assistance of the manager who was her friend, David Propst. She had known David Propst as they are both leaders of her grandson's Boy Scout troop. She worked there almost full time but because of difficulties in performing the duties of her job, was shifted to seasonal work and let go on December 24th. During the time between her job with Campbell Mattress and Radio Shack she was off work and received temporary total disability benefits of approximately 36 weeks.
Mary testified that she is addicted to drugs and alcohol and that began in 1988 when she lived in the State of Texas. There she became addicted to alcohol. In later more recent years, she became addicted to pain killers following her surgeries.
In 1995, while working at Custom Design Interiors, she developed carpal tunnel syndrome in her right wrist and underwent surgery by Dr. Steven Benz. She settled that claim for 10 % of the right wrist at the 175 week level.
In 2006, she injured her right shoulder and was referred by Campbell Mattress to Dr. Schafer. He did injections to the shoulder and prescribed physical therapy. She testified that Campbell Mattress did not want to turn this into Workers' Compensation and they paid the bills directly and not through Workers' Compensation. She settled that claim for 7.2 % of the right shoulder.
In March 2008, she developed problems with her left elbow and was referred by her employer, Campbell Mattress, to Dr. Keele in Cape Girardeau. He did approximately seven to eight injections to her left elbow. Campbell Mattress again directly paid the medical bills. She settled that claim in November 2011 for 121 / 2 % permanent partial disability at the level of the elbow. She testified that following the treatment she continued to have problems with the elbow including loss of strength, numbness in her fingers, range of motion and being painful with use. She also testified that following the left elbow treatment she continued to have problems in performing the duties of her job at Campbell Mattress. She was placed on five different jobs, each successive job being of lighter duty. The last job that she had was doing "border surging". She said that this is the least physical job and was made even less physical by the fact that someone else would load her material for her. She described the border surging job as running a sewing machine to sew up the material along the edge of the mattress. Mary was fully trained on all the different jobs at Campbell Mattress and could train others. Only one other female had more seniority than her at Campbell Mattress.
Mary testified that she did not do any overtime work, or at least as much as the other workers, because of her arm problems.
On the date of the accident of September 3, 2009, she was not doing her border surging job because someone else had not reported to work that day. She was assigned to a more physical job that day and originally was receiving help from a co-employee in carryin