You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2008.
Follow the link. On a side note, I had this saved as a draft for a very long time.
Last month I was shocked to see $35.54 extra on my Verizon phone bill. It seems somebody signed up for long distance and internet fax services on my number instead of their own. Instead of informing me of a change in my electronic debt, Verizon took the money out of my account. When I saw this in my register at my bank, I was very upset–in fact it made me more than ever want to cancel my useless land line. On the phone with Verizon I talk to Tony and explain that I did not authorize Verizon to increase their EFT and informed him I would appreciate a reversal of these charges that are not mine. Well, Tony said he could put a block on these charges but could not reverse the fees–I had to call the random companies that can piggyback onto anyone’s phone bill. To this I informed Tony that in the state of Washington I can contest this charge and put a stop payment on the EFT. This seems to be a silly way of dealing with this issue and it would make more sense for Verizon to resolve this issue. Tony goes and takes a leak and finds a “manager” that magically authorizes a credit to be put on my account. Fair enough, now I will not have a bill for next month.
Enter this month: Verizon charges my account while a credit that is OVER the monthly charge sits on my account. Should I be surprised? What happens when the government de facto allows a company to become a monopoly but then to offer the olive branch of competition with these crazy services that can add onto Verizon’s bill. I am resolved to cancel my land line forever and to demand my money back. Tomorrow I will waste at least 30 minutes of my life on the phone…to the phone company.
And one more thing; a company that claims to offer 21st century technology with wireless and internet connectivity cannot figure out a way to have email support for their land lines. I know there are regional rules, but can they not route emails to the operators that already deal with these issues? Pfft! Verizon will see not even a red cent from me…I will let someone else charge me money for things I marginally need.
It has been almost a week since the extraction of my lower wisdom teeth; if you were to ask me beforehand if I would still be taking pain medication, I would have laughed at you and given you a nougy (not only am I a poor speller in formal English, my lack of skill spills over into the colloquial.) For some reason my right tooth did not want to go quietly into the night.
Let me back up; the sleepy-time medicine did not work for me nor did the laughing gas–I am sure I could still do long division and differential equations if I had a graphing calculator. Luckily the novacain worked. The left tooth was no problem, but the right tooth put up a fight; in an act of selfishness, the tooth somehow nicked my artery and made me bleed…real bad. Did I mention it was about 5:45 pm at this point? The normal time for dentists and oral surgeons to go home. After some phone calls, my dentist got me into an oral surgeon. Sara drove me to Mill Creek–from Everett–to have an oral surgeon’s assistant pull all the gauze out of my mouth and cause it to fill with blood–hmm, this man was sent because the dentist could not stop the bleeding, maybe some care would be part of the protocol. After vacuuming blood from my mouth, packing the hole with bone wax, and sewing it shut the oral surgeon insisted that I go the the ER to make sure I did not lose too much blood (ETA is about 8:00 pm.)
By the time we arrived at the ER, I felt like I needed some pain medication. I have a fairly high tolerance for pain–partly because I hate pain medication–but I knew after all of the finagling that happened in my jaw that I needed some medicine. On arrival my pain level was at a 2. By 10:40 pm when the nurse finally gave me two Percocet my pain level rose to about a 7.
Had I known that I would be forced into the black hole of medical care, I would have had them put me out to take out my wisdom teeth. Many people learn something after such a traumatic experience, the only thing that I learned: Percocet does not constipate you like Vicodin.
