(written on the 23rd)
It was not the most comfortable of blessings days.
I slept relatively well, so that was nice, but as I got back on the road and was probably an hour or whatever from getting to Utah, I got a call from the dermatologist saying that, in fact, even though they had told me they took my Liberty HealthShare, they actually didn’t.
😠
9-hour drive to go to a dermatologist that according to my insurance was guaranteed to accept my insurance.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Called my insurance, and even though their find-a-doctor system shows that doctor as a participating provider at 100%, no, that’s actually not any guarantee.
I was incensed.
I hate this organization. They have gone from an organization I highly recommended to everyone to being one that I can’t wait to get away from.
I spent the morning on the phone between the doctor and the healthshare company trying to get it all figured out and eventually just gave up.
Killed some time in a nearby Walmart parking lot before going to the appointment, knowing that it was going to be a self-pay visit.
And good luck to me if I needed biopsies or anything like that.
I’m quite angry with that awful company. I really need to figure out what organization to switch to.
Ugh.
Because I was so frazzled, I forgot to take notes to remind myself of all of the things I wanted to talk to the dermatologist about. Consequently, I forgot to ask several questions while I was in there. I remembered one as I was leaving, so I walked back in and the doctor checked me out for that one question that I had forgotten while I was in the room with him. But I forgot other questions that I needed to ask.
9 hour drive. Last-minute appointment. Healthshare debacle. Self pay. And I didn’t even get the questions asked that I needed to ask.
😕
Decided to drown my sorrows at a local Wendy’s, but their drink machine was broken, and that’s… the main reason to go to Wendy’s. 🙃
So I drove to another nearby Wendy’s that was on my way to Cory’s place and ate there.
Really bad Wendy’s. Short staffed by the look of it. Order taker got my order wrong (which I don’t really care about and didn’t say anything about). No ketchup cups. I forget what else.
It was a pretty bad store. 😅
Drove to a Chase Bank to order some New Zealand cash and then found myself shocked by the fees, or better said, the rate they were willing to give me. For some reason, I thought Banks did money exchange as a service for being a member of the bank.
Clearly not.
At least as of the day that I was wanting to order the money, it took only 57 American cents to make one New Zealand dollar, but they were going to charge me 62 cents per dollar. 😶
So I didn’t order the money and started looking for alternate ways of being able to pay for a vehicle when I arrive in New Zealand.
Ugh.
I think maybe it was around that time that I remembered the other questions that I forgot to ask the dermatologist, very important questions.
They were important enough that I ended up calling the after hours line. I didn’t realize that it was considered an emergency line, as they only called it an after-hours line. 😅
Gratefully, the dermatologist I saw earlier in the day called me back, and though he was I think irritated at first, after he heard my story about driving from South Dakota to come and see him and the debacle with his office saying that I was covered with my health share organization until the morning of the appointment after I had already driven seven hours and stayed overnight in Wyoming, he softened quite a bit and offered to let me come first thing in the morning to his other clinic and to not charge me.
🙏
I headed over to my friend Cory’s place, don’t remember the exact chronology of the day, and he was there, as I saw him in his kitchen closing the blinds as I pulled up, but he didn’t answer his phone or my texts, and since he was taking care of his mom at the time, I didn’t want to knock on the door and cause any issues, so I just drove away and went to another Wendy’s for dinner. 🙃
Hung out at a Walmart until I think after 11:00 p.m. glued to my phone. Then I drove to where I was hoping to stay the night, a Maverik just a handful of miles away from the other location I would be seeing the doctor at early in the morning around 7:30 or so.
As you know, I often will sleep at the larger Maveriks, because they don’t seem to care, but nearly the moment that I pulled up, I had one police car pull up right next to me on one side, and another police car pull up near me on the other side.
Not knowing what they might think, I jumped out of my bed and into the front seat before they could see that I had even been in my bed. 🙃
“I’ll wait for them to leave,” I thought.
But they didn’t leave. 😅
In fact, not only did they stick around, I think there were three or four other police cars that all came up and parked right near me.
😶
They got out of their vehicles and went inside and got food and then all came out and sat down on the picnic benches, staying there for an hour and a half. 😶
I didn’t want to start my engine and leave because my exhaust is so darn loud right now from the damage I did trying to get it unstuck from the field in Arkansas.
So I just sat there in the front seat of my van on my phone… waiting.
They all finally packed up and left, the last one leaving about 1:10 a.m., after which I fired up Rover and decided that Maverik wasn’t the best place to stay for the night. 😆
Gratefully, there was one of those truck parking spots off the side of the highway just a handful of miles down the road, so I drove to that, choosing the northbound side, so I could quickly just head north to my appointment first thing in the morning.
Vegged out for a little bit longer on my phone and then crashed for the night, setting my alarm for an early wake up.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 