Tammy Louise Edgerton (Claimant), age 57 years, currently resides in Licking, Missouri, with her son and her daughter-in-law. Claimant graduated from Rolla High School in 1977. She became a respiratory therapist in 1980, and worked at Phelps County Hospital for four to five years. She would administer breathing treatments, EKGs, EEGs, PFT tests and run ventilators. She then worked for Texas County Memorial Hospital as a respiratory therapist in Houston, Missouri for approximately five years. When her husband at the time moved to Virginia, Claimant followed him and obtained a job as a respiratory therapist at the Woodstock Shenandoah Hospital. She maintained that position for more than four years.
Eventually, Claimant returned to Missouri. She was unable to find work immediately and accepted employment as a cook at the Rolla High School cafeteria. After about a year, she returned to work as a respiratory therapist at the Ozarks Medical Center in West Plains, where she remained employed for seven years. During this time she also obtained a two-year associate degree and passed state and federal boards to become certified in respiratory therapy. Her duties at the West Plains facility were much the same as previously described except that she also gave methalyne tests for asthma.
Claimant eventually quit work to care for her ailing parents. Her mother had end-stage renal failure and her father had undergone a triple heart by-pass. After her mother passed away, Claimant continued to care for her father for another five months, who then remarried. She then became a caregiver for her father-in-law.
While taking her father-in-law to Columbia, Missouri for some medical care, Claimant was hurt in a automobile accident near Freeburg, Missouri. She suffered whiplash injury and a bulging disc. Claimant said the pain from the injury and range of motion deficits never resolved. Still, Claimant continued to care for her father-in-law until he died in 1997.
Claimant said she was burned out from having worked as a respiratory therapist and from the stress of caring for her relatives for five years. She eventually returned to work in September 2000, accepting a cashier position with Pump N Pantry. In addition to running the cash register, Claimant was responsible for stocking a cooler and cleaning the counter and restrooms. It was this latter duty that gave rise to the instant claim.
She was employed at Pump N Pantry for only three days. Claimant understood, from another worker, Amy, that a certain cleanser was eating the finish from the bathroom fixtures, and she should not use the product. On September 5, 2000, however, a supervisor directed Claimant to use that particular cleaning product. While cleaning a second bathroom, Claimant contends that her lungs became tight, which she attributes to the cleaning product. Claimant does not know the name of the cleaning product. She does not have a picture of the label, nor any other identifying information as to its ingredients or their concentration. She only knows that it was a cleaner. Despite the alleged accident, Claimant did not seek immediate medical attention. She continued her shift and went to the emergency room for treatment the following day.
Records from Texas County Memorial Hospital verify that Claimant was admitted on September 7, 2000 and discharged the following day on September 8, 2000. She gave a history of have been "exposed to several cleaning chemicals in her new job." (Exhibit C). But she also gave a history of having cold symptoms the previous week with head congestion, fever chills, nonproductive cough and possibly some
wheezes. She further gave a history of having to walk one mile on September 6, 2000, because she had run out of gasoline and subsequently experienced a moderate to severe shortness of breath with wheezing. An x-ray report dated September 7, 2000 indicated moderate bronchitis.
Claimant remained in the hospital overnight and was discharged September 8, 2000. She was given several medications and treatments during her short stay at the Texas County Memorial Hospital. She was in an improved condition and not wheezing at all when she was discharged. In the discharge summary, the treating physician noted:
Patient had previously worked as an RT for approximately 23 years and reports that during that time she had had occasion to test herself with spirometry and states that she had noted lots of small airway obstruction.
(Exhibit C). This differs