January has continued to toss curve balls at us. Of course we were back to work on Tuesday. I spent lunch hour taking the boxes out of my car and stacking them up in the library. There were only five and the bag with the feather tree in it, but it seemed to take forever. I basically cleaned them out during odd off times the rest of the week. Threw any instructional things away and just away tucked special stuff: my twenty, twenty-five, and thirty year certificates and pins, my leave and earnings statements because they said we had to keep them for five years, and my big folder of my government employment history. Plus the photos I had on my wall, the photo of James, and a little cross stitch of a Bible verse. I threw out all the seasonal calendar pictures that I have put up in my cubicle over the years to brighten it up, including two scenes of Boston. Nowhere to put them.

Something cool happened Tuesday night: we had gotten the title for the ruined truck in the mail on Monday, copied it, and then put it in the pre-paid Fex-Ex envelope we had from the insurance company, but we still had to get it mailed. So we drove the three miles back to the Green in Smyrna only to find the Fex-Ex guy picking up at the box behind Shane's barbecue place. I handed it right to him. We came home through Bank Street because I love the Craftsman houses they have put up there, and there trotting across the street near the park was a fox! It paid no attention to us, but once gaining the other side of the street, sat and scratched itself behind the ear and then trotted away!

Wednesday I had to drag four essential things back to work: three packets of oatmeal, my dish and spoon, my extension cord, and especially my fan. I got a lot of little things done, but nothing closer to getting my last two purchase orders finished, and I began to feel a bit off as the afternoon wore on. By the time I got home I was ice cold (and it wasn't cold out). Teleworking Thursday I kept running to the bathroom and again started to get the chills in the afternoon. I logged off about 2:30 because even with a sweatshirt on and my fuzzy slippers, I could not get warm. About five I took my temperature and it was 99, and it was 99.9 about seven. Then I broken into a copious sweat and was drenched with a normal temperature by bedtime.

Friday was my "day off." We basically spent it racing back and forth to Mobility Works to finally get the chair lift put on the truck, first dropping it off in the morning. I had barely gotten any sleep and came home and collapsed on the futon, not to wake up until 11:30, cursing myself, because I had to get to the business office at Kaiser.

You see, Mobility Works told James if he had a letter from the doctor saying that the lift was being used for transportation of a wheelchair, we wouldn't have to pay the tax. Well, I don't know what got misinterpreted by who, but we got a letter in the mail a few days back from Apria Healthcare (which has nothing to do with James' wheelchair or the power lift; he gets his sleep apnea supplies from them) saying they were denying our claim for a wheelchair lift because it was for personal pleasure. Well, (a) I found that additionally insulting because he needs the stupid thing mainly to get to work, which sure as hell isn't pleasure, and (b) we knew we couldn't claim the lift—we couldn't do it last time. All this on top of sending it to the wrong company. The lady in the business office was very sweet but she was utterly clueless and kept calling it a "referral" or a "approval." We didn't need anything referred or approved. We just needed what the salesman told us later wasn't even a letter; they just wanted something on prescription letterhead saying "Mr. Young requires a wheelchair transport device." She finally gave me a printout of the other referral we did put in, before the accident, to get a larger footplate and a new control cover for the chair, and pointed out that it said "accessories." But the lift isn't considered an accessory for the power chair. Basically they provide the power chair; if we want to transport it somewhere, we have to pay for it ourselves. Mobility Works didn't take it, but has given me a chance to get it, which I can do in my "copious free time" next week.

Anyway, once the lift was ready, we had to go back to Mobility Works, bring the truck home, load the chair on it, and then take it back for final adjustments. The guy came back saying he needed to show James something: the chair needed to be fixed. Now it was somewhat damaged in the accident, which is not surprising since it was thrown across the road. The headpiece is crooked, part of the plastic housing at the bottom is broken, and the arms are all scratched. Plus he told us one of the shocks is bent. But the worst thing, he said, was that the two big drive wheels, the ones under the seat, were not resting in the little gap in the lift made for them. The two front wheels and the two rear wheels were suspending it up about half an inch over the gap. He said the shocks were too tight.

Both James and I told him tartly that had nothing to do with the accident; it's never fit into that gap and has always ridden high. He was surprised that no one had told us it needed to be adjusted. Nope, they didn't, even when James brought it there for a 500-mile-checkup or whatever it was last year or the year before. We were going to have to bring it back up there anyway because the old lift was listing to the right.

Since it was suppertime by the time we got done with all this, we went to Fried Tomato Buffet for dinner. In retrospect, this was a rotten idea. I still wasn't feeling well—I'd had stomach cramps off and on all day—and I ate the shrimp, olives, and cucumber and tomato salad. By the time evening rolled around, let's say things had taken a turn for the liquid.

All this and I have to wrestle with Kaiser again, too. Bah, humbug.

Labels: animals, health, retirement, sickness, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:58:00 PM

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