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Posted on Monday, November 03, 2014
Happy Birthday Stacey
Jason came through again by sending flowers for Stacey.
They
arrived just in the nick of time as Stacey was calling him to ask if he
wanted to go out to eat with us. Jason was asking her, "Did you get
anything today?", and Stacey kept telling him, "No." But right then the
door bell rang and the dog started barking. It was a delivery, from
Jason, of flowers with a helium filled balloon. So they were able to
talk about it on the way to eat. But really, the main topic was the
fight between Jeff Gordon, Brad Kesoloski and their NASCAR pit crews.
Posted on Monday, November 10, 2014
Daleville Trip
We arrived in Daleville with a pizza and our clothes in the pickup
truck. We turned on the water, water heater and turned up the furnace,
then ate our pizza and hooked up the TV. Pretty soon it was sleepy time.
Saturday
morning, I woke up and it was fairly chilly in the house. I checked the
thermostat and it read 61 degrees. I asked Linda if she knew what the
deal was with it not heating. No, she didn't. We went down stairs and
looked at the furnace, then checked a switch and followed the wire to a
separate fuse box. It looked like the fuses were OK, but we changed two
of them anyway. Still no heat, no fan, nothing worked. Since Linda had
worked at Lehman's Heating and Cooling, she had friends that she thought
would be able to fix it. She went on Facebook to Brad Douglas's profile
and found his business phone number. Brad called back a little later and
said he would be over at 7 AM. He arrived on time and we talked a few
minutes about what everyone had done since Linda had left Lehman's, then
he went to look at the furnace. With his electrical tester he was able
to track down one of the problems. It was a blown fuse in a different
box that looked like it was OK. He changed that and the furnace began to
run. Within about two minutes, it shut off without getting the house to
the temperature the thermostat was set. Brad immediately said the filter
was too dirty and was blocking enough air flow that the furnace was not
getting rid of enough heat so it was kicking off. We changed the filter
and he restarted the furnace. This time it continued to run until the
thermostat shut it off. Great! A fuse and a new filter and we had it
working. We went upstairs and sat at the table and began talking about
when Brad had came down to the farm to ride ATVs and things that had
happened to each of us since then. Brad had left Lehman's and started
his own company in Anderson called Alpha
Air. He installs HVAC residential systems and also does service on
them. After paying Brad for his service call, we sat and talked for over
an hour before he left. It was nice to see him again. Linda and I began
moving the living room things out of the way and tearing out the old
carpet, pad, staples and the tack strips.
After
laying down one row of backer board and screwing it down, we moved the
couch to the other side of the room. Then we pulled the remaining carpet
up and cleaned up the tack strip and staples. Lunch was from Elbert's, a
little more work, then a shopping trip to Menard's We were mainly
checking the availability of some things we were planning on using later
in our construction process. We did buy three boxes of different
amperage fuses for the house, just in case something else goes bad. We
returned to the house and hooked up the TV again, this time on the other
side of the living room.
Sunday morning, the furnace was still
working and at the proper temperature. That was reassuring to me. We had
breakfast and then laid down another full row of backer boards, then I
screwed them down while Linda finished removing all the staples from the
floor. I began cutting the edge pieces to fit and Linda took over
screwing them down. Pretty soon we were done. After McRibs for a late
lunch, Stacey and Linda went to visit with Nana while I watched the
NASCAR race. 
Monday
morning, Stacey was a little twitchy, so we quickly gave her a Valium
along with her regular meds. Things continued like that as we packed up,
shut off everything, set the furnace to 55 degrees and headed home. We
had to give Stacey more Valium as we were driving, but after we crossed
the Ohio River, it seemed like she was doing OK. So, we stopped in
Campbellsville for some take out sandwiches and ate as we were driving
the rest of the way to the farm. Stacey helped unload the truck and
didn't need any more Valium the rest of the night.
Posted on Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Frustration Ends
On October 29th, I found out that the Cumberland County Pharmacy (CCP)
had been giving us Stacey's medications without getting paid. They had
expected their billings to go through, but Coventry Cares (CC) had not
paid since August 28th. I started out by calling Coventry Cares and was
told that Dr Zhu's office needed to send in a Prior Authorization (PA)
form to them. I called Dr Zhu's office and they said they would take
care of it. A couple of days went by and I called the pharmacy about
Stacey's meds and they tried getting paid, no luck. I called CC and
again they said I needed the doctor's office to send in a PA. This
procedure went on for about 2 weeks. Still no results. I remained calm
and polite through the entire time, but it was getting frustrating. I
asked Linda to call and see if she could do anything. She got farther
along, but still no payment to the pharmacy. "Give it 48 hours.", she
was told. We waited over the weekend and still no payments.
Friday, I
told the CCP that Stacey was nearly out of medications and we could not
get it fixed with CC. Once again, they gave us the medications, but
asked me to come in on Monday and call CC from their business so we
could all talk together.
Monday, Stacey and I went to CCP and they
called their number for CC, then put me on the phone. I had to have
Stacey give them the OK to talk to us due to HIPAA laws. Then we chatted
and had to tell the entire story again, then I gave the phone back to
the pharmacist and she talked to CC. All this took about a hour.
Finally, I was told to go back home and they would call later to let me
know if anything had been changed. About 1:30 PM the phone rang, nothing
was different, still no payments.
Wednesday, I went back to the CCP
without being asked to check to see if any payments had been made. They
hadn't, so the pharmacist called CC again. This time, a positive result.
The payments were processed and they were being paid for Stacey's
medications. We had a mini celebration right then!
Dr Zhu had told me
over a year ago how the insurance companies were making it nearly
impossible for people to get their brand name medications. He was
completely correct. My GM Retiree medication provider, Express Scripts
(ES) won't cover them at all, no way, no how. Coventry Cares requires
letters from the doctors and Prior Authorization which they make nearly
impossible to achieve.
This is the second time we've had to go
through this procedure. We are approved for one year, so we can look
forward to doing this again.
Thanks to Cumberland County Pharmacy
and their staff for caring more about the person than their money!
Coventry Cares and Express Scripts, eh, not so much!
Posted on Friday, November 28, 2014
Painting Ceiling (Twice)
Linda had an extra day off before Thanksgiving and was wanting something
to do. Pauline and Brent came over the previous weekend, so we figured
we would go to IN and do a little bit of work on the Daleville house. We
left the farm after Linda came home from school Tuesday afternoon. I had
thought we might be able to miss a lot of the holiday traffic by leaving
a day early, but that didn't work out very well. We were stopped on I-65
before we were near Louisville and then again between Louisville and
Indy, but we finally made it. We were too late to pick up our normal
supper of Pizza King, so we had to settle for Arby's and Taco Bell the
first night. One good thing though, the furnace was functioning properly
and quickly raised the heat to the desired temperature. Tuesday morning,
Linda made a quick breakfast of cinnamon rolls and it was time to begin
the painting of the living room ceiling. Linda used a brush to paint the
grooves between the ceiling tiles while I taped the trim and began
rolling the paint on the tiles. I quickly caught her and made us a
couple glasses of ice cold Coke. A bit more work, another break to let
her get the feeling back in her hand and we had the first coat on the
ceiling.
Stacey
and Linda went to the grocery to buy the items they needed for our small
Thanksgiving Dinner the next day. I waited a while, then put a second
coat of paint on the entire ceiling. They returned from the store and
put away the groceries. Anita had called Linda while they were buying
groceries and she came over to see the house and what we had done to it.
We gave her the grand tour, which took about two minutes, then we sat
and talked a while. We ended up going to Elbert's and eating. Heck,
Anita seemed to know as many people in there as we did. We had a good
time, Linda and Anita drank Pepsi and I drank Buds. Before things got
too crazy, we went back to the house and sat and talked another hour or
more before Anita left for her house.
Thanksgiving Day we had a nice
small dinner, just the three of us, no shopping, no football, just being
a small family in a small house with plenty of peace and quiet. It was
nice. I did call Brent and wish him, Pauliine, Julie, Kyle, Dorothy and
Larry a happy Thanksgiving from all of us. I'm really glad Pauline was
able to get her Mom and Dad to come to their house for Thanksgiving, it
means a lot to her! Around 2 PM
Linda went to Gay &Abner Jr's house.
Linda's Mom and her neices & nephews were there. She was back in a
couple of hours. Friday morning we had omelets for breakfast and took it
slowly getting ready to leave for KY. It was spitting snow, but no
accumulation on the roads. We took the Interstate through Indy and
exited at the 76 mile maker near Edinburgh then went US 31 south to the
19 mile marker on 65 to avoid the construction. It was a nice ride going
that way. Then we stopped at Kingfish and picked up our usual dinner,
but this time we ate in the truck since it was too windy and cool to eat
outside and too cold to leave Coco in the truck by himself. We buzzed
through the construction between Louisville and Elizabeth town, just
barely slowing down, then trucked on back to the farm without any
problems.
Posted on Sunday, November 30, 2014
Back In Town
Saturday morning, Pauline and Brent arrived early because we had made
plans to go to the Wellness Center in Albany and let their kids swim
while we were in the pool too. We gathered up our towels and put on our
swim suits, loaded in their Traverse and Brent drove us over to Albany.
We went in and were greeted with a "pool is closed" from the guy working
the front desk. Supposedly, something had broke and they would know
about the repairs when a service man came on Monday. I told Linda this
was the same scenario they played on us last year and they never did get
the pool heated during the winter months. The kids were disappointed and
so were we! Nothing could be done about it, so we left and ate at the
Mexican Restaurant before leaving Albany. Brent drove us across the Wolf
Creek Dam and to Greensburg. We went through town and stopped at Central
Furniture to look around at their stuff. We eventually had looked at all
of their items and left for the farm. We took Daisy for a run and messed
around outside for a while.
Sunday, Kyle talked Linda into getting
out Brent's old Optimus Prime, a Transformer, he had when he was about
Kyle's age.
Linda
gets Optimus Prime out of the original box and will let Kyle hold it,
but won't let him play with the toy. She's working to get Kyle to be
gentle and not break his toys. She used her diamond necklace to teach
Julie to handle things carefully a few years ago. Now it is Kyle's turn.
Brent showed Kyle how Optimus would change shapes and transform before
Linda put it back in the box.
