Day 292 - what I saw this morning

This has nothing to do with leukemia and, fortunately for a cute young woman named Maja, nothing to do with goodbyes either, but is an interesting story. This was not my favorite morning. I had therapy and got on the expressway in the wrong direction (on autopilot I was going to work) and took a few miles to figure it out so I had to turn around and then I didn't have time to buy coffee or put gas in the car so I was running super late and you can imagine how happy I was. Then, the insurance people called to tell me that actually there still is some problem with *their* records which they cannot fix until the ambulance company sends them a copy of the bill because and then she started speaking in a lost language of the people of farthest Siberia. She was very nice and assured me that they wouldn't take me to collections for what is essentially their bookkeeping error and I was in the midst of saying "thank you" when I witnessed an accident.
What happened is I was on 101 headed west and there was a slow moving car in the right lane followed by an oil/gas truck. Not one of the residential ones that deliver oil to people's houses, but one that delivers gas to gas stations. So, a big one. There were four cars ahead of me and the first one was going just marginally faster than the truck so it was taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r to pass the slow going car just ahead of the truck. I thought I did not want to be stuck behind the truck if it pulled into the left lane so I pulled up to close the gap between me and the car ahead of me. The car ahead of me was about even with the back of the truck and all of them were kind of packed in in the way drivers get when someone is going slowly in the fast lane. The truck put on its turn signal and no one made a move to let the truck in. It turned its turn signal off and a few seconds passed, then it turned it back on. I said to myself "Trouble" and pulled back a few car lengths. When no one slowed down to let it in, it started to drift over into the line of cars next to it. It appeared as though it was trying to put its nose into the space ahead of the SUV it ultimately hit. Then it drifted back to the left, then it came over for real and hit the side of an SUV. We were all going around 65-70. It just hit her car and realized what happened and then pulled back into the right lane. I stopped. The truck stopped. "I didn't see you!" he said. The person he hit was a 25 or so year old woman. I gave her my cell phone number, checked that she was ok and headed off to work (now even later). I am hoping she calls me because this is a driver who should not be on the road IMHO and I hope there is a police report. Even if her SUV was not there, there was not enough space for him to be in the left lane between the other cars that were there. And, if you cannot see an SUV, something is wrong with your looking apparatus. Just saying.
It's a good thing I am interested in things because I cannot drive to work evidently without something interesting happening. I had to hang up on the insurance woman, "O, my God, gotta go, it's an accident!" so I still don't know what I am supposed to do to correct their accounting error. I keep thinking about how easily it could have had a horrible ending for that young woman who seemed only a little bit older than my own daughter.
So, let's look at a happy picture, OK?

The daffodils in my front yard with Ellie's cast iron garden fairy.

About the insurance thing, I keep thinking that this is the only problem I have had in over $200,000 worth of treatment. I cannot believe how lucky I am. Better believe I am deeply grateful. I am also thankful that I did not witness a fireball on the expressway this morning. As for hopes, I hope that driver uses this near miss as an opportunity to change his behavior so he doesn't cause a real disaster in the future. For you, safe travels even if it's just a little ways.

Day 286 - being cross about the health insurance blues

You may recall my (tiny) insurance troubles. The first was that when I took an ambulance trip, the insurance company sent a check to me for half of the fee and I sent the check on to the ambulance company, then the insurance company paid the other half of the fee. The ambulance company was happy and said they had been paid, but the insurance company said that I needed to pay them back half of the fee. It turned out when I called them that the rep said that they might need me to send them a check for that amount because they had made an accounting error and put the amount in the wrong column and she wasn't sure if they could correct their error. I asked her to work on figuring out how to do fix it. A couple weeks later we got a letter telling us that we did not owe them any more money.

As for the more important one, my disability, no progress. I sent an email to the person who has been helping me with disability stuff and she sent me an email saying that she had sent it on to the new case manager and I'd hear in 3-5 days. Eight days later, I sent another email asking what the status was and she said I'd hear soon. Monday I will ask for the case manager's phone number. I really only care about it in the case that if I relapse I don't want to be denied disability because Dartmouth goofed up this episode. If some one could assure me that if I need to go out again, there won't be any problems, I'd pack up my issues and stop darkening everyone's inbox.

I recognize that my insurance troubles are so simple and miniature compared to most people with serious illnesses and that I have enough energy to deal with them and am not barfing or in pain and yet still they're a nuisance to deal with. I am in awe of people who have to deal with actually being disabled *and* insurance screwups *and* whose insurance is more complicated than mine so things go wrong constantly. (Mine has been pretty simple. Work for DHC, get almost all my treatment through DHC. Insurance is through DHC. Everything I need is in network and I do not need to cough up any money besides my copays and deductables.)

I am thankful that I have good medical insurance and hope my family and I always do. I wish that for you, too.