Dear Jim: A long overdue update.
Haven’t been very active since this depressing winter eliminated all activities that produce any fun in our day to day.
However, two new items have arrived in the spirit of my rapidly downward rush to being completely useless.
My company no longer provides travel medical insurance so off I went to buy a policy for Sally and me.
I thought this would take an hour or so and so with the help of Chat GPT I got a list of all the providers and proceeded to make an application.
The first company was excited to hear from me, and we spent an hour going through all the health history of both of us. At that time the agent said, “Great, I will now calculate a quote for you. First though, what is your date of birth?” I told her and she said,” you must be confused”. Nope that’s it…kind of close to WW2 I know but that’s it.
Well, she says, we only insure up to age 74. I had no idea you were still working if you are as old as you say. I replied, I am only 74 plus a few months. Can you make an exception?
HA!!
Finally, after many attempts with other companies, most of which are still laughing at my request, I found one that would insure both of us with several exclusions.
After explaining our past and current history and our in-depth knowledge of every hospital and lab in the province, they reluctantly agreed to provide us with the policy.
With the exclusions for Sally, she will only be covered while travelling if we get hit by a slow-moving self -driving automobile and break her right ankle. There is of course a substantial deductible and everything else is excluded based on history.
I contemplated, for Sally, an action plan while travelling that wouldn’t require insurance but she wouldn’t go for it. If anything happened to her, I would remove all forms of identification and drop her off at the emergency door. If she was unconscious, all the better.
She would later claim amnesia, but they would treat her. When she was better, she could sneak out of the hospital and Le Voila. Good as new... I have always been good at thinking out of the box. My back up plan was to travel alone and face-time Sally with the good parts of the trip. Not perfect but works for me.
My second problem comes from being accused of not hearing well. The complaint was so vigorous I was on the verge of reporting Elder Abuse and getting a restraining order.
In my defense, if someone is talking all the time as they move from room to room it would take an act of extraordinary ,continuous concentration ,to keep focus for the never ending extended soliloquies. I made note of the fact that at least half of the talking was to the cat and I wasn’t even meant to understand.
As I thought this through, I realized I don’t have a hearing problem, I have a Caring problem.!! I also noted that saying “What”? often is a good chance to smoothly get back into the conversation.
So, smarty pants that I am, I am ordering fake hearing aids. This way I can profess to be doing the best I can and ask for patience and understanding. Why don’t I just get real hearing aids you say? Well, I tried them once and frankly I didn’t like all the things I began to hear so I gave them back!
These age-related revelations have got to stop as I need to have a perfect life. No more problems please and if you have any pull, up there, see if you can get a free pass for age 80 onward in recognition of traumas that occurred before. That way we could stop worrying and have a great time.
Will keep you posted and by the way you never did send me a sign that all was good up there. I’m beginning to think you and your Nun sister wasted a good part of your life perpetuating a scam. I’m giving you one more chance!
Regards,
Bill
