From Doctor’s Bills to Elephant Bells

I got a bill from the doctor’s office for the first time I saw his nurse practitioner about at my Popeye’s Elbow. $39.00 for the clinic visit and after the “Medicare Insurance Adjustment” the grand total came to $107.43. What the heck? Insurance adjustments are supposed to lower your bill, not raise them by $68.43. I called their billing service and was told that Medicare likes to help you get to your deductible faster. “By making me pay for services I’m not getting? That makes no sense what so ever!” I told her. “I know,” she replied. “You’ll have to call Medicare for a more comprehensive explanation. We can't do anything about it.” Medicare takes forever and a day to send out their Summary Notices but when it gets here you can bet your grocery money that I’ll be calling about that $68.43 “adjustment.” In the meantime I was told I should pay the bill in full. It’s been years since I’ve racked up enough doctor appointments in a calendar year to satisfy my Medicare deductible before November. And I like it that way because that means I haven’t been sick. What a crazy, stupid change in Medicare if it pans out not to be a mistake. What if I didn’t have an extra seventy bucks to throw around on something I didn’t get?

The next day I got another bill from the doctor’s office, this time for $52.00 and after the “Medicare Insurance Adjustment” it was reduced down to $43.39. I called again. I was told the first bill was for the use of the clinic room, the second was for the services of the nurse practitioner. I used the bathroom while I was there so I'm surprised I didn't get billed for a toilet paper and flushing fee! 

Service people saw the surly side of me this week. My irrigation company called two weeks ago and wanted to come out this week Wednesday to turn my system on and fix any heads that winter may have damaged. Great, I could be home then but the scheduler couldn’t give me a window of time they’d be here. “I’ll let you know later,” he promised. He didn't. Tuesday morning I called him and asked if he could give me a window for the next day. “I’ll call you after six when I have the route set,” he said. I replied---and not too nicely, I might add---that I liked their old system better. “What was the old system?” he asked and I told him that the guy who did his job for years before he took it over always gave us a window of three hours in the same phone call when he’d set the date. “I can do that when I call tonight.” “A lot of good that does,” I snapped, “when I’ve had to keep the entire day open for two weeks waiting for you to call with a time!” Fortunately, the young guy who showed up to do the work was a sweetie pie and I didn’t give him a lick of surly or sass. 

Thursday the tide was about to change. When I came out of the grocery store I loaded my bounty into the car, hopped in the driver’s seat and hopped back out to take a sheet of notebook paper off my windshield. In block print, no punctuation or capitalization---a sure sign the writer was under thirty---were the words, “have a happy day” followed by a happy face drawing. I looked around and of course no one was around to see me smile. Then a cynical thought crossed my mind. Maybe someone scratched or dented my car and he/she left that note because someone saw it happen and the note writer was pretending to leave their contact information. I walked around the car, carefully eyeballing the gray metal and plastic. It was fine. I was truly the recipient of a random act of kindness. I kept the note and I’ll pass it on to another unsuspecting soul who will probably wear a silly smile all afternoon like I did---hopefully without my momentary cynical thought. 

Life was good again and it got better on Friday when I went to a lecture called, What Happens When You Tickle an Elephant's Toes? Crazy name but an interesting lecture about the Elephant Nature Park outside Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, which is a place where dozens of elephants live who’ve been abused and neglected. The woman giving the lecture took part in one of those volunteer programs where she paid to spend two weeks working at the sanctuary bathing, walking and feeding the elephants who live there. She’s a fascinating person. She works in a Search & Rescue K9 Unit and has been to over 40 countries. Her vacations are never your standard, hotel and tour bus kind of vacations. She finds these off the wall, ecotourism vacations that I’d never do but love hearing about. Why is it that some of us are doers and others, like me, are their cheerleaders? In my next life I want to be a doer who finds out firsthand that if you tickle an elephant’s toes they "laugh" just like we do and who learns that elephants are so smart they'll pack grass up inside the bells they wear around their necks to make them stop ringing when they play hide and seek with their Mahout. ©

NOTE: Ecotourism is defined as, “tourism directed toward exotic, often threatened, natural environments, especially to support conservation efforts and observe wildlife.” In other words you pay to work to make a difference for good causes.  Volunteer for Wildlife 

Photo at the top is of an elepant bell.

From Silliness to Seriousness and Back Again

Barely two weeks into August and it feels like fall this morning. I’m sitting here wishing that I’d give into the urge to turn the furnace on to take the chill out of the house. My yard on the other hand looks like a lush, dew-touched jungle in the early sun. Plants need thinning, trees need trimming, weeds need pulling and the woodpeckers are pecking on their feeding log near-by. They’re the only birds I’m feeding these days. I do see an occasional hummingbird coming by to check out the big ball of pink otherwise known as a begonia that sits by my window screen. They’re not impressed. Ungrateful creatures, I bought it just for them. 

Earlier this week the Gathering Girls got together for our First Mondays brunch. We have a seventh member now, invited in by unanimous consent. I like her a lot and we discovered Monday that she’s got a background in art. What are the chances that three out of seven random woman looking for friends would have art in common? Our little spin-off group from the senior hall has been doing brunches since early spring and back then I had visualized we’d be doing more summer outings than the two-three we’ve done in addition to the brunches. I forgot how old we all are and how that factors into how far people are willing/able to walk in peruse of fun. Still, I’m counting the experiment in trying to organize us a success. Did I mention that I appointed myself the group’s secretary who sends out a mass email reminder before the brunches and another of ‘minutes from the brunch’ afterward to keep us all on the same page regarding future plans? Yes, I can officially say I now have post-widowhood friends. It’s been a long haul finding them and it took an adjustment in how I define friendships.

New topic: I get my health insurance through an employee’s retiree trust and they are leaning on us to change from Traditional Medicare to Medicare Advantage PPO. It’s voluntary now but how long will that last? I went to a meeting this week about the plan because I’m stressed out about making this decision. Literally half the doctors in town---all attached to the largest hospital---are out-of-network for the advantage plan but, for the most part, I don’t use that hospital or their doctors anyway. I hate changes like this! I hate that our entire country’s healthcare system seems to be pulling apart at the seams. I hate that I can’t be young again when all I had to worry about was measles, mumps and running with scissors.

In addition to the insurance meeting and brunch with the Gathering Girls, I had my second (and last) painting lesson followed by going to a Big Band music concert in the park. Another day I had lunch with my book club plus old friends from out of state were in town and we had dinner together. But the biggest time-consumer project this week was getting my carpeting cleaned. Everything small had to be moved out of the way in four rooms and then carried back again after the carpet dried. Last year when it was cleaned the dog vomited on it soon after the guys left. I have never had a dog who up-chucks as often as Levi does and no matter how hard I try to get a paper under him or him moved to a hard surfaced floor when I hear those telltale retching, gagging sounds, he resists. He seems to think vomit belongs on carpeting which is why I pay an extra $100 to have them treated with Scotchgard. It works. Sign me up for one of their commercials where I’d get paid to say, “Levi puked here and there and it didn't stain! It sits on the surface waiting for me to clean it up.”

Back tracking to the concert in the park: When Don was alive we went every summer Tuesday but this was only the second one I’ve gone since he passed away. Gosh, it was fun! B.L. and I had dropped our chairs off before walking across the park to get ice cream and when we got back we discovered that a couple had moved our chairs back a row and put theirs in their place. Who does that? We got our revenge laughing when a bird came by and pooped on the guy’s down-under hat. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to people watch at free concerts. My favorite was a guy strutting around in cheap, red gym shorts that at first glance looked like they had a girlie ruffle at the bottom and with them he was wearing red high-topped leather boots. On the opposite end of the ‘classiness scale’ was a couple who danced to nearly every song---songs like, Stormy Weather, Red Sails in the Sunset, String of Pearls, and Georgia. A grandmother dancing in a long, bumpy lumpy pink knit dress was also entertaining to watch. She was holding a towheaded boy who in turn was holding a black baby doll while five little kids ran circles around and around her feet. Other people watchers watching B.L. and I giggling over silly comments whispered between us probably thought we were two seventy year olds acting like seven. I don’t care. The world would be a better place with more silliness and laughter. ©

 This video of movie dance scenes mashed up has nothing to do with this blog. 

It's just fun to watch.