Powerful Memories

Some weeks are different than others. This most recent one was filled with big momentous things. The appointments at work all felt pivotal, each of them imbued with crucial importance somehow. In the midst of all this heightened awareness, a family member falls ill and suddenly its all hands on deck. St. Mary’s hospital once again becomes central to our lives. Its the place where my children were born. Its the place where 20 years ago I had emergency open heart surgery. There are memories in that building, not all of them pleasant.

The events of the week have caused me to recall my experience there from April of 2004. Some of it I remember quite vividly, but much of it has become muddled with the passage of time. I have also discovered that Pam’s memories of it are much different than mine. Over dinner one night we were talking about my recovery from the surgery and how long it had taken. My memories were that after a couple of months I was back at work and as good as new. Pam disagreed with this startling comment, “It was at least a year before you were all the way back.” When I protested she explained, “It was like there was a light in your eyes that went out and it took a year before I saw it turn on again.”

She went on to describe how when I was recovering in the hospital I didn’t want her to leave the room. Even after leaving the hospital and going home, for weeks I didn’t want her to leave the house. As she was telling me this I felt embarrassed, ashamed for being such a wimp. Then she said, “It’s like you thought you were broken, damaged.” That memory then flooded back. Yes. That I remember, feeling broken. Each hiccup, each twitch, real and imagined, brought stifling apprehension. You constantly ponder the inner workings of your body. You turn inward and become completely self-obsessed. Its unavoidable I suppose. You’ve got an hideous 7 inch scar down the middle of your chest. Its impossible to ignore.

But eventually you discover that you aren’t broken. You might have a scar to remind you of your mortality, but you are not broken. Finally, you start ignoring the beating of your own heart like you did every second of your life before it all happened. Then, I guess, the light came back on.

My Dreaded Medicare Call

Made the dreaded call to Medicare yesterday. After being handed off to three different departments and being on hold for 18 minutes, finally Dave’s voice came on the line identifying himself as a member of the fraud team. I knew immediately that I was in competent hands…

Dave: Mr. Dunnevant, first of all thanks for your patience. Secondly, you will not be handed off to anyone else on this call. The buck stops with me.

Me: Uh..wait…thanks?

Dave: I have pulled up the bill in question for five months of “incontinence supplies” and something tells me that you have never had the need for, much less used 200 catheters every single month since May…am I right?

Me: Yes!

Dave: This will not make you feel any better but you are not the first person I have talked to about this particular scam. We have had a rash of incontinence bills of late and are slowly making our way through them. This particular provider is no longer approved by Medicare.

Me: Do 200 catheters really cost $2090?

Dave: I have no idea what they cost. Medicare fraud types care little about the niceties of pricing. They just make prices up. You’ll notice that we paid the first five months of these bills but caught it in October and declined it.

Me: Actually, I didn’t notice that. But what about the other five months? It says here that you paid for those and this latest bill I got says that my share is $1247.

Dave: Mr. Dunnevant, I can assure you that you will not pay for anything associated with this bill. After we finish the investigation you will receive a final bill showing all of these transactions being voided out.

Me: When will that happen?

Dave: In about six months.

Me: So this doctor in Bristol, Connecticut and his fake company have made off with over $10,000 of taxpayer money?

Dave: Just from this one case. Yes. I’m sure there are hundreds more. But we will eventually find and prosecute those responsible.

By this time, my admiration for Dave and his professionalism has peaked. I remembered what my Dad used to tell me when I was a kid—“Son, whenever you can be an encourager.”

Me: Look Dave, I’ve only been on Medicare since April of last year but before this unfortunate incident I have been thrilled with the program. You guys have saved me a lot of money and handled every single claim quickly. So, I’m grateful.

Dave: Thank you, Mr. Dunnevant. For every one compliment like yours I get nine complaints from people who think Medicare sucks because it won’t pay for their gym membership!

So, say a prayer for my man Dave as he tracks down our money that has been stolen by some asshole in Connecticut 

Are You Ready for Election 2024?

For most of my adult life I have been a political optimist. What I mean by this is I never get too excited or disappointed by the outcomes of elections. I have voted for my share of winners and losers over the past forty-five years, but never has an election outcome changed my life. Despite the dire warnings I hear from political partisans during the heat of campaigns, life goes on its merry way even when the bad guy wins. I have the genius of our Founding Fathers to thank for this happy fact. They designed a system of government which is almost impossible to commandeer by any single rouge politician, what with all of its balance of power mechanisms and competing branches of government. Even when someone wins a landslide election, he can’t just ram his agenda through the labyrinth of duplicity which is the United States Congress.(See: Franklin Delano Roosevelt). I remember quite well how many times I was warned by friends and clients of the impending end of the Republic which was guaranteed to happen if Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump or Joe Biden was elected. The Republic survived.

However, with today’s Iowa Caucuses, the 2024 presidential election begins in earnest, and I am dreading it more than any election in my lifetime. 2024 is a busy year for me. I have a lot going on, many things to accomplish, all the while droning on in the background will be the persistent, annoying soundtrack of presidential politics. The leading candidates are 77 and 81 years of age. One shuffles along stumbling and fumbling with his words, his skin having taken on that high shiny gloss of advanced age. The other runs on a platform of revenge and payback for past insults real and imagined, while he’s not appearing in court fending off what seems like 150 lawsuits. If these two ever meet on a debate stage it might be the most embarrassing moment in the history of both television and democracy. If the debate commission opened the broadcast to advertisers, the biggest players would be Viagra and Depends Undergarments.

But…it isn’t funny. None of this is funny. It only seems funny when humor is our only defense against it. No matter where we might stand on the political spectrum, if 2024 gives us a choice between Trump and Biden, we are all losers. Democracy will look like a spent fighter in the fifteenth round trying to hang on to the bell. Our friends will be watching the fiasco unfold and wonder what ever happened to America? Our enemies will be emboldened by the spectacle of two doddering fools vying for control of the world’s biggest and most powerful democracy. The American people will have no one to blame since it will have been us who asked for this matchup.

Although I’m still optimistic by nature and temperament, I am finding less tangible reasons to be so. The 2024 election cycle feels to me like the end of something, and the beginning of something else.

Not Looking Forward to THIS Phone Call

I will be the first to admit that my memory isn’t what it used to be. Oh, my brain is still jammed full of useless information that I can recall in a nanosecond, like the starting lineup of the 1962 New York Mets or the lyrics to every Beatle song ever written or every word of dialogue from Blazing Saddles. However, when it comes to things that would be useful to remember, my memory seems to be getting worse every day. I’ll be working on something at the office, spin around to the computer on my credenza and forget what I needed on that computer the second my fingers are poised on the keyboard. I’ll walk downstairs to ask Pam something only to have forgotten the question as soon as I find her. Readers of a certain age will understand this condition referred to in medical circles as temporary adult recall delay syndrome, but best known by senior citizens as GFS*.

I bring this up in relationship to an incident from yesterday which began with a trip to the mailbox. I should say that practically nothing good results from a trip to my mailbox anymore. When I was a kid the delivery of the afternoon mail was an exciting time full of possibilities. Back then I was constantly sending in box tops from cereal boxes or dashing off requests for autographed 8x10 photographs of my favorite baseball players. There was no telling what wonders awaited me in that rusted old mailbox. Now its only bills, sale flyers from stores I’ve never heard of, or political ads. But yesterday there was a rather thick 5x7 envelope from Anthem/Medicare.

I have been on Medicare since April 1st of 2023 and have been singing their praises to anyone who would listen ever since. The money that I have saved since that happy day in April is staggering. The total bill for all the heart related testing and procedures I endured during 2023 finally came in at the princely sum of $75,000. My cost after Medicare? $1247.00 What a deal!

So, imagine my surprise when I found this information inside the Anthem/Medicare envelope…

Although the part that said, Total You Pay: $0.00, was quite the relief, I stared at the column on the far left for several minutes trying to shake off an unusually severe case of GFS. Try as I might I could not recall ever being treated for incontinence, so therefore couldn’t possibly imagine what supplies I would have needed for such treatment. Additionally, I couldn’t fathom why such supplies would have cost anyone $2090 a month. Moreover, why would Medicare have paid for such ludicrously expensive treatment? Making matters much worse was the revelation that I had been under such treatment for 6 months. Now, having admitted to having an increasingly faulty memory, I would think that if I had been treated for incontinence for six consecutive months—I would have remembered it.

So tomorrow I will call the patient complaint line at Anthem/Medicare to discuss this problem and I’m not looking forward to it…

Me: I just received a bill for six months of incontinence treatments, but I have never been treated for incontinence.

Anthem/Medicare Customer Care Professional: Yes, Mr. Dunnevant. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions for our files?

Me: Sure.

Anthem/Medicare Customer Care Professional: What is today’s date and who is the President of the United States?

* Geezers Forgetting Stuff

An Awful Lot Like Work

Ok. So, the book publishing thing has ceased to be fun and now has become stressful. Much progress has been made, but with each completed task comes a new, more demanding one. In the next week I am to make a final decision on the cover art as well as picking out an interior scheme. Then I have a meeting with some guy in charge of author websites and something called my book’s digital presence. After that it will be marketing plans and pricing etc…Suddenly this seems an awful lot like work.

Its still exciting, although I much prefer the actual writing part, everything else has been a challenge, dragging me kicking and screaming into things I’m not at all comfortable with. But maybe this is all a good thing. It is natural for people as they get older to become fixed and rigid, a little too comfortable in our routines. Its what leads to the grumpy old man syndrome. I would like to avoid going any deeper into that abyss than I already am. I’ve been told that taking on new challenges is a good way to fight complacency. Consider me challenged.

I’ve shared the two cover art finalists with several people and gotten all of their opinions. I’m pretty sure that I will choose this one…

I like this one for several reasons. First, my protagonist has a miraculous gift that allows him to win games of chance, so the roulette wheel eyeball is cool.  Secondly, dreams play a huge part in the story so there is a tension throughout between reality and dreams which makes the droopy eyelid very cool.

Results of My Tech-Fast

Yes, I did survive my 24 hour technology boycott, but not without a few hiccups along the way. I did carve out a few exceptions to facilitate my business requirements. After arriving at the office I tried to log in to my broker-dealer site and was reminded to type in the 6-digit authentication code, which was available only on the Authentication app on my smartphone, which was facedown on the desk in my home library! After driving all the way home then all the way back (luckily for me a ten minute round trip), I retrieved the code then promptly turned off the phone and never used it again. All day long I never once checked Facebook or Instagram, my emails and texts, or even the stock market. When I discovered the next morning that while I was unplugged the markets had their best day by far of the year, I couldn’t help but smile. A friend of mine suggested that maybe I should go off the grid so he could retire next year!

When I broke my techno-fast I had 47 emails, 16 texts and quite a few Facebook notifications—none of which really mattered. During the 4-plus hours a day that I normally would have been online in some capacity, I was putting a puzzle together, and reading two of the physical books I got for Christmas, finishing them both. I’m kind of a fast reader.

So, what conclusions did I draw from this experiment? For one, I was surprised at the almost physical discomfort I experienced in the first part of the day simply from the fear that I was missing out on something. FOMO is a thing, I’m told. Of course I wasn’t missing out on anything important in hind-site, but I might have been. Maybe Pam got side swiped by a drunk in a pickup truck on her way to school and was desperate to speak with me. Maybe my house was on fire and Jamie was trying to call. In either of those cases my decision to forego the modern convenience of instant and portable communication would have been a tragic error in judgment, not to mention the doghouse that I would have been in as a result. But, it turned out to be a normal day. No harm, no foul.

By the end of the day I felt like I had accomplished something, although I’m not exactly sure what. I suppose what I learned was something I already knew and that is that I spend too much time on social media. Without resorting to a boycott, I could improve my overall mental health by cutting my usage in half—without missing a single thing of lasting importance.

Also, during my boycott day I had some extra time to explore more closely the many Christmas presents I received. I had almost forgotten this one. I can’t remember who gave it to me—it was either my sister-in-law Sharon or my son-in-law Jon—since it fits their unusual humor profiles…

This baby is going into the office tomorrow!!

24 Hours Without the Internet?

For the record, I have not seen the film Leave the World Behind, and I don’t intend to. I have enough to worry about without having to endure artificial hysteria from Hollywood. Although the film’s premise is something I have long worried about, I’m thinking that watching a two hour movie about the sudden destruction of the internet which leaves most of the western world helpless would do absolutely nothing to help me sleep better at night. So, I’ll pass on Barack and Michelle Obama’s latest vanity project.

But, I will freely admit that modern technology worries me. Yes, I have benefitted greatly from the digital revolution and so have you, but every time my Apple Watch tells me that my screen time increased 22% last week, I worry. I have become totally dependent on a functioning internet. If somebody bombed the United States Postal Service out of existence tomorrow, I would hardly bat an eye. But if my email box went dark I would be lost. How would I even get paid? Right now when I see money in my brokerage account I click a key on my laptop and the money appears in my checking account within 24 hours. How would I actually buy anything? Research anything? Communicate with my kids? Find Dad Jokes? Thanks to me uncanny sense of direction I could at least remember how to drive to Maine, but since my car is essentially a computer on wheels, it probably wouldn't even start. But, enough doom and gloom.

It has started me to thinking—something I’m not always comfortable with. Instead of contemplating the collapse of the internet and the chaos it would bring, I have been asking myself a more mundane question. Could I go one day, 24 hours, without it? Could I intentionally leave my cellphone on my nightstand, park my Apple Watch in the charging stand and close my laptop and iPad for 24 hours? I mean, after I finish writing this blog. Actually, I don’t think I could, not because I couldn’t muster the necessary discipline but because I couldn’t function at work…

Kristin: I need the password to Riskalyze.

Me: I don’t have it.

Kristin: Look on your phone. They just texted it to you.

Me: Maybe so, but I’m not using technology today.

Kristin: You’re an idiot.

Who am I kidding? Even if I could manage to get through a day at the office without the internet, could I really go all day long without checking the markets, checking my social media feeds or checking how many page-views this post got? Of course I could. Couldn’t I? I wonder. If I were to carve out an exception for business-specific requirements like the aforementioned Riskalyze password in order to avoid Kristin’s epic eye-roll, could I lay the rest of it down for 24 hours?

Meet me here tomorrow morning and let’s all find out!