I hope you recover quickly and completely, Glen.
One of the more ghastly realities we face is that some in CASA are prepared for us to be driven to physical or mental breakdown, and ultimately to the grave, in the name of 'aviation safety'. The most dangerous ones are those who are sure they are 'right'.
In 2018 I started a thread about Avmed's biased, intellectually dishonest and unlawful behaviour to which I was personally subjected. An apologist for Avmed posted (as a first post - that's always the 'giveaway') this:
The emotional effort and time to 'fight' for a principle or against perceived slights is not going to be healthy for you in the long term.
In my supplementary submission to the Senate Committee inquiry into the general aviation industry I say this about the above statement:
To people with that mindset, their compliance with the law is a matter of mere principle, not substance. Someone on the receiving end of their unlawful behaviour has suffered a mere perceived slight. Avmed is the authority, and it is for others to comply with whatever, in Avmed's opinion, is required in the interests of aviation safety. The law is for Avmed to wield against others, not for Avmed to comply with if it gets in the way of doing whatever, in Avmed's opinion, will contribute to the achievement of its noble cause.
The single quotation marks around 'fight' and the comment about resistance being bad for your health manifest the languid arrogance of someone who knows that if a mere individual wants to take on an authority committed to a noble cause, the authority is going to bring to bear formidable resources and tactics to drive the individual into the ground. Every 'trick in the book' is going to be used to 'win', including casting the individual in the worst possible light by exaggerating and catastrophizing risks and downplaying matters in favour of the individual. And the process will certainly be very bad for the individual's financial health. ...
Sound familiar?
Submission #56 to the current inquiry details a couple of examples of appalling behaviour and demands by Avmed that in my view are the product, at best, of negligent people who are insouciantly indifferent to demanding medical tests entailing risks to the pilot of permanent brain damage or death many, many orders of magnitude higher than the probabilities of winning the lottery, when people with specialist qualifications and experience consider the tests unnecessary.
It is to be hoped that the new CASA PMO is a change for the better. That would require her to understand and accept that Avmed is supposed to comply with the law like the rest of us. And you can't comply with the law unless you know what it is and means. In my first hand experience and observation, some previous occupants considered themselves to be laws unto themselves. I hope they haven't chosen another one of those.