Hurry Up And Wait

Yesterday Terry was supposed to have her first appointment for the hyperbaric oxygen therapy to hopefully help remedy the problems she has been suffering from due to the intense radiation she received when she had cancer years ago. We were told there would be 40 treatments, five days a week for anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours.

We arrived for the appointment about 20 minutes early and they settled us in a room and said the doctor would be in shortly. Terry said the chair they had her in was comfortable even if it was a bit oversize.

When the doctor came in, we discovered that Medicare had not approved the procedures and there is no guarantee they will. So, either we have to agree to pay out-of-pocket if Medicare denies everything, or we have to wait and let them resubmit it and see what happens. The doctor did admit that there is no guarantee as to how much improvement she will see with her problems, if any at all, after the treatment. Now we are waiting to see what happens next. If we get an firm denial from Medicare, does anybody want to buy a very nice pontoon boat with only a few hours on it and an almost new Mustang?

Even though there are two Verizon wireless towers near our home, the service has absolutely sucked since the day we moved in. About half the time our calls get dropped, or we can’t call out at all, or someone will try to call us and the call won’t connect. But a hundred yards away, out by the highway, service is just fine. I tried all kinds of antenna boosters and nothing helped. So, it was time for a change.

Our friend Jim, who lives about a block away, has AT&T and his service is always good. Even sitting in our house with us, he will have two or three bars of signal when we have none. We’ve been Verizon customers for close to 20 years, and I had a grandfathered unlimited plan, but every year it seemed like they took something else away from it. So much for unlimited, right? After doing a lot of research, I decided to switch to Consumer Cellular. Their phones can use the AT&T towers, and their monthly plans for everything I had from Verizon are unbelievably less expensive.

A couple of days ago when we were in Daytona Beach, I went to a Target store that provids Consumer Cellular plans, and the young man there told me I really needed to go to the SuperTarget in Port Orange, a few miles away. He said they had techs there wearing black shirts who were experts on different cell phone plans and switching things around and such. He also said they would have someone on duty there until 9 PM. With plenty of time to spare, we decided to grab a bite to eat first, and then went to the Port Orange store, arriving about 7:15. That’s when we found out that the black shirt tech gets off duty at 7 PM and we just missed him.

After Terry’s doctor appointment yesterday we went back to Port Orange, and this time we did find a young lady wearing the requisite black shirt. It even said “tech” on it, so I knew it was the right person. She was just beginning to help another customer switch over from Verizon to Consumer Cellular, so we had to wait about an hour for her to get all of that done and get things transferred to her new phone. While we are waiting somebody else came in to do the same thing, switching from Verizon to Consumer Cellular. There seems to be a trend. If I were the CEO of Verizon, I might be concerned about that.

It took a couple of hours to get everything squared away for us, but it was worth the wait. With Consumer Cellular and their special discount for AARP members, we got unlimited talk and text on three phones, and 20 GB of data shared per month for less than $100. With Verizon we were paying $263, and only my phone had the unlimited feature. Terry and Beverly’s phones were both limited to 1200 minutes per month, and there was a limit on the text, but I don’t remember what that was. Whatever it was, we are bound to save a lot of money with the new plan. Back at home we all had 2 to 3 bars of service on our phones, and the calls we did make and receive during the evening went through just fine.

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for a new Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an RV camping journal donated by Barbara House. Barbara makes several variations of these, and they all have pages where you can list the date, weather, where you traveled to and from that day, beginning and ending mileage, campground information including amenities at RV sites, a place for a campground rating, room to record activities, people met along the way, reminders of places to see and things to do the next time you’re in the area, and a page for notes for each day. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

And finally, here’s another chuckle to start your day. We saw these two signs on the door of a pizza parlor in New Smyrna Beach the other day.

Thought For The Day – The best apology is changed behavior.