The goal for everyday blogging is struggling a bit. To my defense, I have just experienced one of those ego blowing moments when I am forced to face that my life cannot continue as it has been. The trajectory has shifted. The timeline has split (sort of a Trekkie concept–another reflection for another blog entry) and I am left on the timeline I could not have imagined would actually happen (though to be honest I have imagined the possibility).

I am not ready to share details. Yes, it is that ego deflating. But as I went on a 5 K walk (a runner thinks in kilometers — 3.1 miles for the uninitiated) without a mobile phone (I so recommend doing this), I was forced into metaphorical thinking, and a couple of memories struck me as relevant.

South Bend, IN was my home and that of my nuclear family for twelve years. During that time, I was dismayed to discover that there was no efficient way to travel from one of the larger metropolitan areas of Indiana to its capital, Indianapolis. No interstate. Still no interstate. There is a major highway (US 31) that was meant to be a through way, but thanks to the town of Kokomo (not to be confused with the city of song in Florida), resistant to having its strip of businesses ignored by the rest of Northern Indiana, succeeded in putting up multiple stoplights. From what I have heard, another bypass has been made around Kokomo (A bypass to bypass the bypass) in yet another attempt to expedite travel between the University of Notre Dame to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

But I digress. North of South Bend, US 31 extends north into Michigan. When I first moved to the city in 1993, Route 31 wound its way through downtown South Bend and eventually reached Niles across the state line and then, through diversion from secondary highway to secondary highway, it eventually connected to another part of US 31 that proceeds in limited access fashion to Grand Rapids. Gradually, section by section, stretch by stretch, first by truly bypassing South Bend and Niles, then extending ALMOST to connect with its sister highway just beyond Benton Harbor, 31 continued construction right up to the point that where there was only one last detour on a 2 mile length of secondary road. One can still see where the split four lane highway had begun construction beyond the orange cones corralling cars to the last exit. I feel I have been driven up that last exit. I can see the route that my life had intended to take to reach the ultimate goal of my vocation, my livelihood. One can now see the weeds and grass that have been taking over and encroaching closer and closer to a detour that was never supposed to be permanent.

Ironically, just earlier this week, I had answered a question on Quora: “How does one define a ‘good life’?” My answer? To sum up, I defined it as being able to look back on one’s time on earth with satisfaction and a sense of peace. This definition has not changed for me. Eternally optimistic, I still envision my fate leading me to a ‘good life’.

There was another metaphor that occurred to me on this walk, but like a dream disappearing upon waking, like a tremendous plan evaporating after a whiff of nitrous oxide, it is gone. I may be able to return to the room I just left (the rail trail west of Alma) and it will come back. No matter.

A quick thanks to the two (that I know of) that have written comments to this infant blog — Dave, who also did a stint with “Errand Broad” and Rae, who has been one of my most faithful friends of Facebook. I hope you found a way to follow me, Rae. I’ll let you know when I know!

It began with Quora. You know you are of some sort of distant generation if the social media platform that most appeals to you is one that consists entirely of asking and answering questions. I’m good at it. I pass 10,000 views a week and my upvotes are increasing rapidly as well. When I spent sometime reflecting on this and then discussing it with my computer engineering student son, I realized that the core of this enterprise for me is telling stories. Not fairy-tale, fictional stories, but real life, experiential, historical, educational stories. It was then that I knew that a blog would be an ideal channel for my skills as a raconteur. (ding-ding college word!)

My current occupation is family physician working as independent contractor. Though my knowledge and practice are of high quality, my ability to keep a job is not. I have come to the middle of my life wondering what I am going to do with it. Just to illustrate that I am not inflating my competence, I am board certified with medical licenses in good standing in two states. I have never been sued for malpractice, though most doctors would agree that sometimes this is a matter of luck than absence of actual irresponsible mistakes. However, I like to think that this is no accident — I spend a lot of time listening to and examining patients and then spend almost as much time exploring and determining diagnoses and effective treatments AND THEN I educate my patients about their health and the rationale for my treatment.

And then, of course, when I have spent a half hour doing this, I still have to document it all. It never goes as quickly as I wish it would. And after failing for the third time to keep up with employer expectations for efficiency and productivity, I am left now to figure out the next step.

But we have loads of time to talk about that. Too mundane to continue for now.

The title? The same engineering son I spoke of above often engages with me in remembering the evolution of technology through the past few decades. What never fails to amuse and amaze me are the people who cling to older versions of technology even though it is reasonably obvious that the new versions will be much easier to use. Fax machines represent one of my favorite examples. In the mid 1980’s I was in graduate school in theology. My part time job to pay my way through school consisted of driving for a delivery service company with the name “Errand Boy.” Yes, I recognize how sexist that title would be considered now. It was not unusual at that time for me to get surprised responses from workers I delivered to. A postal employee loved to refer to me as “Errand Broad.” Oh, that’s right — fax machines — this job predated the common use of theses automated typewriters that functioned much like the old fashion teletype. The earliest ones could not transmit pictures or anything that could not be reduced to line by line print. One of my runs involved driving to a Neiman Marcus department store to pick up the receipts for that day and then driving up to O’Hare to have them flown to Dallas for their accountants to review and process.

We’ve come a long way — even fax machines are on the way out, though it is still remarkable the amount of paper that comes through a physician’s office in the form of faxed medical records. More and more offices are transitioning to scanned or electronically stored records that they send as email attachments (with the obligatory signed release permissions included). I ran into one of the collisions that can occur when people are at different points in the technology spectrum. One medical office only did record transactions through email. The receiving office only handled their records through fax. I wound up acting as intermediary (these were my personal medical records). The first office sent them to me by email. I printed them out and then faxed them to the second office. Yes, I still own a fax. It sits in a remote corner of our house. Perhaps once or twice a year I hunt it down, dust it off, connect it to a phone line, and then hope I can remember how to operate it.

There is a reason that fax machines are being replaced by digital medium, and it has nothing to do with excessive use of paper — it is that the material they send is often flawed — blurred, cut-off text, overlapping illegible lines. I have a whole medical safety/mistake story that centers on a fax, but that is for another time.

The title. At the bottom of most faxed message is a page count. I presume it is a way of making sure one has received the entire document that was sent from the other end. One day I saw this page count: Page 4 of 3. I am not sure where the extra page became manifest, but there it was. So now I am hoping that this is what this blog can be . . . the page you were not expecting, the page that everyone else denies having sent or knowing it exists.

Get ready for page 4 of 3.

Post mom continues.

The medical bills have been an ongoing adventure.  In frustration.  In amazement at the general incompetence of the phone PR person.  In the belief (be it ever so paranoid) that most health providing institutions are eager to hold onto money even if it is not theirs to hold on to.

I have created a special folder for these people.  A back note:  I have had to create a whole new folder system (I am generally not that organized) to make sure I am doing a almost reasonable job of keeping up.  It has meant juggling four different accounts from which to pay bills, depending on which account seems the most fluid at the time.

So, I discovered that at any one time, there was at least one (if not more) place of business that I was in conflict with over inaccurate billing.  There was the medical supply place that picked up all their equipment but somehow lost the documentation that they had done so, and so kept billing my mom/me for that equipment.  It took three months of repeated calling to said business before finally settling the issue.  Oh, and did I mention that they had also picked up some equipment belonging to a different supply company?  Piece of advice:  never deal with the managerial people on these kind of problems.  They will never actually get around to doing the groundwork that needs to happen.  After a month of trying to sort this error out, I finally obtained the phone number of the equipment storage people and called myself (hence discovering manager did not ever do this) and voila–problem solved.

Not the worst case, however.  One extended care facility (euphemism for nursing home) where my mother did rehab, failed to act competently on a couple of fronts.  The first, they did not do due diligence with tracking how many days my mother would have Medicare coverage for her stay.  A bill I expected to be $6,000 turned out to be $13,000 (I cannot make these things up).  After exhausting my mother’s annuity, the bill was paid and I got the wonderful final (supposedly) statement showing we owed $0.00.  Since then I have learned to never exhale when these statements come.  Exactly one month later, I received a statement from the same institution that reported me owing another $1,800 in charges (part of this billed to Medicare).  I might have taken this a little better if this statement had come by itself.  But no, they had to send a warning that this account would be sent to a bill collector if we did not pay it right away.  That rated a very upset call from me, where I reached voicemail and left a very detailed message conveying a description of this error and my desire it be corrected.  Please note that I have never used obscenity, raised my voice, or threatened any violent activity.  But it is always very obvious when I am angry and this element was evident in my message.  I received a call shortly thereafter from a very apologetic customer service person, quickly conveying to me this mistake was being immediately corrected and my mother owed nothing.

One would suppose the successful outcome in such matters would at least provide relief of my anxiety and state of fury at incompetence, but the sad fact is, this folder of mine, the one with paperwork from all the people I don’t like very much, has never been empty.  Still not empty.  This journey of medical care with my mother started almost a year ago, and appears to be continuing after her death.  During that time at least a half dozen entities have occupied this folder (it has a zip up binder all to itself) and sometimes the same company that I have removed at one point, has returned to the folder, often without much time in between.

The company that mistakenly added $1,800 worth of charges?  They may have forgiven me my mother’s portion (about $500) but I am left to wonder if they didn’t still proceed with submitting billing to Medicare for non-existent care.  I contemplate the value of speaking with Medicare about that.  Once I sort out revenge (I am still totally incensed about the nerve to include a collection notice with this obvious error) from actual civic concern about the abuse of our Medicare system, I probably will pursue this.  In reality, the timing will probably have nothing to do with figuring out my motivation, but more to do when I finally get a break from the rest of this chaos.

I really don’t like these people very much.

After a moderately expected death this past week, I have begun processing my mother’s belongings.

Reflections on the emptying of her purse:

1.  Chinese fortune cookie papers — true fortunes:  you will soon meet the person you desire.  –advice:  don’t be fooled by first impressions;  you should be able to undertake and complete anything.  —the joke:  42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
2. Driver’s License (Kentucky).  Not only is the picture not flattering, my mother appears downright sad, as if she knew this would be her final picture I.D.
3. a never activated Target debit card.  My mother never owed a thing in her life — when we attempted to apply for a home equity loan toward the end of her life in order to pay medical bills, I learned for the first time that it is possible to not have a credit score.  Not a bad credit score.  No score at all.
4. an HHgregg $300.00 gift card.  Never heard of the place.  Will look up online, see if the card is still good.
5. The obligatory frequent flyer cards:  Peebles, Kroger, Fazoli’s, Barnes & Noble, Walgreens
6. It goes on.  Social Security, Medicare, corneal lens implant ID card, library card
7. Miscellaneous scraps of paper with people’s name, numbers, addresses.  Sometimes numbers without names or addresses.  I don’t recognize most of them and I have to believe in the end my mother wouldn’t have either.
8. 66 cents change.
9. A checkbook register without a checkbook.  We had to take away the checkbook when my mother began writing rubber checks and also withdrawing large amounts of cash just so she could have spending money on hand (by large I mean up to half of her monthly income)

My mother guarded this with her life.  She didn’t carry a purse, just this wallet.  What this meant is that we were continuously hunting for the thing, both at home and outdoors.

Reflections will continue.