*** ‘Bout Freakin’ Time, Don’tcha Know? ***

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Not much going on: classes going as expected and going pretty well for the most part; finally over the flu again; dropped the morphine level yet again and doing okay with it so far; and, most importantly, I finally took care of the two huge problems I had going on.

I got my insurance reinstated and was able to buy the clinic a little extra time to get payments caught up. I was told everything had to be current within sixty days of the reinstatement date, meaning the missed payment from last Summer as well as for the last couple of months. I had received a check for refund of premiums paid, which I deposited and immediately cut a check to send back. It cleared my account last night, so I’ll deduct that from the amount I was given and then give that information in letter form to the woman at the clinic who handles all of this stuff.

And, finally, and with even more stress caused by my worthless case manager, I got the electric bill caught up. (I still need to check online to make sure the payment has been posted.) I had bought extra time for Todd to handle the problem of the clinic not paying for three months and then dropping a $469.49 bill into my lap. The problem: he tried to process it through the clinic by billing it to my Medicare Part B. That’s for hospital charges! It was kicked back to him a couple of days before he went out on medical leave but he didn’t want to deal with it. So he stuffed it in a drawer, and then not even in my file!

I had until last Friday, the extra six weeks given to Todd to get it all taken care of. On Thursday, since the account balance was still so high, I asked to see the walk-in case manager of the day, which turned out to be Nathan. Nate is quick, efficient, total eye candy and a helluva nice guy. He wasn’t able to get me an answer that day because the woman who handled those payments (same person as who handled the insurance premiums… a wonderful, over-worked and underpaid lady named Nancy) was unable to access the computer system with all of that stuff, or something. But Nancy got back with Nate the next morning, Friday the 15th, and he called me and left a message for me that I needed to come into the clinic as soon as possible. He was going to be out for the afternoon so I was to ask for Valerie, the walk-in case manager for the day then.

I wasn’t thrilled, especially after a particularly disastrous morning at the class and still being ill… the last thing I wanted to do was to put back on my shoes and trudge over to the clinic, begin at the beginning with someone new, trying to explain all of this shit… you know what I mean. But Nate had done me a solid and apprised Valerie of the whole situation, even finding part of the paperwork needed by going through Todd’s files. Turns out they weren’t going to be able to help me at all because my status stuff had expired. When I told Valerie that I had completed all of that paperwork with Todd and his stand-in on the same day that I spoke with him about the electric bill, she again went into Todd’s files and, in some strange place, found my application paperwork and learned that it was still in process. It hadn’t been turned in before Todd left so his temp replacement had sent it in; it was just pending approval, but that hadn’t been noted in the computer!

So, well… after just a few minutes, Valerie was able to fill out a correct form, walk it over to Nancy, who cut a check to the electric company for me, which I then took to a drop-off place here in town. (The elec company doesn’t have a Santa Fe office anymore, moving everything to Albuquerque.)

So, finally and thank God, it is all taken care of. I rested a lot easier over the weekend since those two situations, the insurance reinstatement and the electric bill brought current, seem to have been all handled. And let me tell ya… I earned the success of these things, believe me. It has been suggested that I might consider suing the bank for once again screwing with my insurance; like I should sue for mental distress, etc. But I’m not going to do that because, for once, the bank was in the right because the June 2012 payment was missed by the clinic. All I want to do now is to relax and to focus on other aspects of my life. But those things are for another entry, another time.

For now, Nate, Valerie and Nancy are getting sincere “Thank You” cards from me. And I’m firing Todd. I’ll request a meeting with his supervisor to go over all of the problems I’ve had in the past three or four months that Todd has been my “case manager,” and will be requesting that my shit be transferred to a different person (ideally, Nate or Valerie, but anyone’s gotta be better than the Toddster).

Have a great day, OD peeps!