Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Tonight's picture was taken in July of 2009. By that point in Mattie's treatment, chemotherapy was behind him, as well as his surgeries. He was only undergoing experimental treatment and the goal was to focus on physical therapy, so that Mattie could relearn to walk and return to school in the Fall of 2009. In this photo you can see Mattie working hard with Anna, his physical therapist. By this point, Mattie and Anna were good buddies as they had been working together for a year! Unfortunately about a month later, we learned Mattie's cancer had metastasized, and then on September 8th, Mattie died. To this day, I still can't get over how valiantly Mattie fought this disease and yet how quickly the disease spread only six weeks off of chemotherapy!

Quote of the day: Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart. ~ Jose N. Harris

It is 8:15pm, I am headed to the Emergency Room with my parents. My dad is very weak, congested, and has an 101 fever. His doctor told me to take him in right away! Keep me in your thoughts. 

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As I have mentioned previously on the blog, I hate opening up my mailbox! Why? Because there are usually countless bills that I need to juggle and process. Yesterday was no different. I opened up the box and found an unexpected medical bill for my mom. So I called the doctor's office and they explained to me that it is my mom's Medicare deductible. Fine, I understood that after she explained it, but then the office manager turned to my dad's medical bills! She proceeded to tell me that all his medical bills have been DENIED since December of 2024. It is JULY, and I am JUST HEARING ABOUT THIS NOW! 

The issue has to do with my dad's supplemental policies. He has one through his former employer and one through my mom's former employer. Somehow these two supplementals are fighting over who is his secondary provider and who is his tertiary provider. Now this is beyond hysterical because my dad has had Medicare and these two supplementals for decades! Why are we facing this issue NOW!? Any case, that led me to having to call both supplemental plans. That was two and half hours on the phone and what I am learning is we most likely will be getting back pay bills for perhaps the last five years. Because the secondary insurer is really the tertiary insurer and has paid MORE than they should have for my dad's care. Seriously it is mind numbing! NOT what I wanted to hear.

What I should mention is during this 2.5 hour nightmare, my cell phone was acting up. I could make calls, but NO ONE could hear me. Or they heard me intermittently! Which meant the call dropped and I had to call back again, and start the conversation all over again, with a new representative. I was so frustrated that I moved to my land line. Yes I still have a land line, and thank goodness I do, otherwise, I couldn't have made these calls. 

Fast forward to today. This morning, while juggling a meeting with one of the fellows who helps me maintain the outside of my house, my neighbor called me. She was in a panic! She couldn't make voice calls from her cell phone. The phone is very important to her. I asked her whether she has AT&T and the answer was YES! So I quickly deduced.... there has to be an outage. So I got on the AT&T portal and sure enough our area has a voice outage for the next 7 days. Which led me to call AT&T, because we all need access to making phone calls. The AT&T rep I spoke to was absolutely delightful. He confirmed the outage and then proceeded to educate me about Wi-Fi calling. I truly had no idea what he was talking about. I kept telling him.... yes I am connected to Wi-Fi, and he told me that is not the same thing as Wi-Fi calling. So he walked me through my cell phone settings and within minutes, he showed me how to turn on Wi-Fi calling. I learned Wi-Fi calling can be on indefinitely and that it serves as a booster to making and receiving all calls. But basically Wi-Fi calling does not rely on your mobile carrier's cell towers, Wi-Fi calling utilizes your existing Wi-Fi network to route calls and texts. He even stayed on the line with me, while I made a call to my neighbor to see if my phone was working. It did! He was a peach.

I then walked over to my neighbor's house and helped her connect to Wi-Fi calling on her phone. She was so thrilled to be able to make phone calls today, that I literally heard from her tonight to thank me for helping her! I told her I understand, the phone is not just about connecting to those we know, but it is also about safety and security!

I am ending with photos of my hibiscus plants. I have two of them. I bought them last spring in memory of my amazing dog, Sunny! To me the flowers are so SUNNY and happy. I take these plants in during the winner and back out in the spring. I thought I had killed them in the transfer back outside. But not only are they thriving, they are producing!!! 

Simply beautiful. In a sea of misery, I stop and look at this beauty, to restabilize.