Tuesday, August 10, 2010 — Getting ready to leave

Skip and I are both suffering from insecurity about leaving this very safe haven with doctors and nurses on call at a moment's notice. Not that we actually call on them very often but it is so nice knowing that someone could be there so quickly. We both recognize how we're feeling and know that we're going to have to "cut the cord." I am suddenly having to deal with communications from our supplemental insurance and calls from all others associated with the upcoming change of venue. I'm sure we'll survive and no doubt we'll learn a lot.

When I returned from Fort Bragg the nurse was drawing blood to check on several things. They have just switched to giving him digitalis to adjust his heartbeat. They'll be closely attending this patient until the moment he leaves. It seems he will be in a three man room at Sherwood Oaks and it will be a middle bed. That's all they have available. So I'm guessing that many of the warm and fuzzy things we've become accustomed to at Sutter will soon become a thing of the past. Such as visiting rights. Can't you just see how it would be if people could just waltz into a three man room at any old time of the day or night. "Visiting hours," here we come. Should provide another good incentive for Skip to work like a beaver at his physical therapy and get home to Madsen Lane.

There were many phone calls to answer this morning. Some ridiculous and frustrating and some actually heartwarming. I won't bore you with the early attempts to answer five calls from the same mechanical woman at Anthem Blue Cross who, when I tried to answer her "urgent" request to have her call returned, would simply not discuss anything about Skip with me. I finally talked her into at least leaving a memo to the effect that I had tried to answer back. I finally allowed that irritating one to drop out of my mind when I opened up a letter from the same folks telling us that six days, from July 23 to July 29, would not be covered because the "doctor" who reviewed the case said there wasn't enough information available to warrent having Skip in the hospital at that time. Well, you can kind of guess what my reaction might be. I looked at the phone# on our cards and called. I informed the woman who answered that my blood pressure was rising and they might soon have me as a patient in the hospital also if they didn't have an answer to this craziness. And, I said that actually I was preparing to call the State Insurance Commission and tell them what Anthem was up to. Boy, was I mad. The very nice lady at the other end knew what she was doing. Her name is Brenda and she's a peach. She slowly calmed me down and assured me that it wasn't going to be that bad. She could make it all OK. She took every bit of personal info I could give her and then looked up the situation and looked up our coverage and told me it was very good coverage and I shouldn't worry. She'd fix it. I calmed down, thanked her and said goodbye. Ten minutes later she called me back and said it was all just a short term mistake and not to worry if that happened again. Sure! I was actually so grateful to her for being so caring and unruffled that I thanked her profusely, asked her for her name and started to say goodbye. But I couldn't help myself. I had to ask her if she lived in Florida. Her calm, capable manner expressed with a soft, special, recognizable little drawl made me think so much of Norma that I just had to ask. She said "yes," she lived in Jacksonville, Florida. How's that for nailing it? Imagine me with a forever pal at Anthem Blue Cross.