Tag Archives: car repair

Blogmas Day 6: Misplaced

By | | , ,
6 Comments

Sunshine! It is amazing how much cheer a few rays of sunshine can add to a room. After a bright and sunny morning, the clouds returned in force, snow is predicted.

I’ve spent a good part of my morning looking for the information sheet the hospital provided for me before I checked out after the colonoscopy, can’t find it. It has been misplaced. How is this even possible! This is a small house, how many places are there that I could have put it. No luck at all, still haven’t found it. I’ve put is somewhere “logical”, but is beyond me just where that might be. This happens from time to time, I assume it happens to everyone. How frustrating!

Today was the day I had to deal with the huge bill received for the repairs to Tank. Ouch! The repair cost more than new windows for the whole house, and that really hurts. Of course it cannot be paid in one go, so I came up with a plan of borrowing and paying back that will take us well into 2019, but it isn’t so tight a strategy that we will suffer. Our belts will be tightened, but we will still be housed, warm, well fed, and able to transport ourselves to work in Attila’s case, and to medical appointments in my case. Really, that is all we need, and when I think about it, it is about all I want, so a sort of balance has been achieved.

Transportation is a huge expense, and not often counted in the assessments of quality of life. Here at Mist Cottage we spend much more of our meagre income on transportation than we do on either food or shelter, as one must include the cost of the vehicle, the insurance, the fuel, and the maintenance; it all adds up at an alarming rate. I have fond memories of living in downtown Toronto, walking everywhere I needed to go, with an occasional foray further afield via public transportation, and even more occasional drive to the countryside to go camping with my girls. Most residential constructs in Canada are such that one must have some sort of personal transport in order to function. Just obtaining food supplies is a major operation without a vehicle, where most people in Canada live.

After Attila arrived home from work, off we went to the garage to pick up the car. The bill wasn’t unreasonable, and since it was a maintenance visit, the bill was manageable. I sighed with relief. [Confession: I wrote the previous sentence mid-afternoon, as an experiment in positive thinking, think happy thoughts and everything turns out all right, right? I knew it might be, in reality, an exercise in delusional thinking. As it turned out, the bill wasn’t unreasonable, but that outcome may not negate the possibility of delusional thinking. Still, it was much more fun to think that if I wished hard enough, things would turn out the way I wanted them to.

Worldly

Weather

1°C
Date: 11:00 AM EST Thursday 6 December 2018
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.6 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 1.1°C
Dew point: -2.0°C
Humidity: 80%
Wind: WSW 23 km/h
Visibility: 16 km

Quote

“The weird thing about houses is that they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives.”
John Green

Fractured Health Care Delivery

By | | , ,
5 Comments

I have been observing lately, and at times very close to home, that lapses in judgement happen to everyone. I have my own list. For some of these incidences on my list, there were no good choices to be made, so it is down to wondering if a different choice might have been a better one. For most lapses though, hindsight allows me to consider alternative options that might have been better choices on my part, if not in outcome, then at least for my conscience. My feeling, at this point in my life, is that I am better to go with what my conscience allows, rather than what others expect, or what seems logical at the time.

It is never a good idea to give other people’s opinions, or your head, full reign over your decisions and actions. A balance must be worked out between your heart and your head, and often this requires hard work.

The weather has turned cold. The dawn was sunless. The weather people are predicting snow squalls with serious visibility issues for driving this afternoon, which should be in full swing as Attila makes his commute home from work. It looks like the snow shovel might come out for the first time since last March.

Plans this week have not worked out well. A night out was cancelled due to warnings of imminent snow squalls that did not materialize. My plans to visit a medical clinic tonight will have to go on hold, snow squalls again. Saturday is supposed to be much better though, with only snow flurries predicted.

I continue to work on my Plan B, it is taking shape, the thoughts and feelings around needing it are beginning to feel familiar, and not so scary. I continue to search for a counsellor. Every day I call and leave a message with a counsellor, who’s fees are eligible for the company health plan coverage, and every day I receive a call back to let me know they are not taking new clients. The list of people I would be comfortable with is almost exhausted, so I may begin again at the top of my list, and inquire about waiting lists. There is no point in seeing someone I am not comfortable with.

It is hard work not falling through the widening cracks in Ontario’s health care structure. A recent call to the medical clinic, where I have been on the waiting list for over two years, gave me a bit of a shock. In May, 2016, I was told that I was at the top of the waiting list of 400 people. When I made yet another call to check on things this week, I was told I was way down the list because I had requested to go on the list in June, 2016. NOOOOO Luckily I write things down, so I had the name of the person I talked to every time, and the dates I had called, and a record of what I was told at each call. The list was consulted again, using my dates, and indeed, I was at the top of the waiting list until someone transcribed the list last June and my name was shoved down the list “by mistake”. I am not sure I believe it was a mistake. I have to wonder if there haven’t been new clients accepted at the clinic, over the last two years, who have connections of some kind. If I hadn’t called, we would be so far down on the list that we would not hear from them for years to come, possibly not in my lifetime. They say they are hiring a new doctor and that I should get a call in the new year… I’ve heard this before from them, so I am not holding my breath.

Another health related gap, is that the report from heart specialist appointment last September did not arrive at the walk-in clinic office. The walk-in clinic did not notice the gap, and it took three calls to them to finally talk with a receptionist, who will request the records from the heart specialist. There were recommendations made that I need to follow up. There are other issues my kidneys and gallbladder that were not followed up as promised by the walk-in clinic, so I will have to after them about that too. Walk-in clinics cannot offer any continuity of care, they aren’t really structured that way. No senior citizen should have to live with this kind of fractured health care delivery.

These things tend to run in cycles, in my experience. So hopefully I will be able to address all of the current gaps, and then enjoy a period of rest before the next cluster comes along.

My Sister-The-Middle-Girl let me know last night that my little brother has had two strokes, which left him dragging one of his legs. The doctors had been trying to figure out why his leg was dragging, and a CT scan revealed that he had had two strokes, unnoticed by him. There are no other discernable effects, other than his leg. My siblings and I, we aren’t children anymore, we aren’t young anymore. And yet, when I think of each of them, in my mind they are the beautiful children that I knew in my early years. For me they are forever young.

We picked up the car from the garage last night, and at last I have a vehicle to use during the day. The bill was substantial, not unfairly so, but substantial on our budget. Belts will be tightened accordingly here at Mist Cottage. The car is working well now, ready for Attila’s commute to work, and for visiting our loved ones during this holiday season.

The errands requiring transportation had been accumulating, and I am now able to begin whittling down the list. The first one was to get the Drive Clean test performed on Tank. With that accomplished, I could pay the annual license fees. Because I was waiting as the doors were unlocked, at the garage for the test, and then the MTO office (Ministry of Transportation) for the license renewals, I was first to the wicket at both locations. Within an hour I was back home and taking care of the accompanying task of applying stickers, and filing. Hopefully next week the weather will be nice enough to make a few trips to the city to check off the other items on my list.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

-2°C
Date: 8:04 AM EST Friday 8 December 2017
Condition: Light Snow
Pressure: 101.4 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: -2.3°C
Dew point: -8.8°C
Humidity: 61%
Wind: W 13 km/h
Wind Chill: -7
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

“It is unbecoming for young men [women] to utter maxims.”
Aristotle
384 BC – 322 BC