Friday, July 01, 2011

Ka-CHING, Ka-CHING

A little over two weeks ago my wife was in Strong Hospital.
She was near death, in my humble opinion, although I’m biased, of course.
My wife has cancer, but supposedly it’s not fatal.
It’s treatable.
Actually, she has two cancers: -a) Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and -b) metastatic breast-cancer.
The Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma appeared about three years ago as a hard tumor in her abdomen.
That was poofed with chemotherapy.
The metastatic breast-cancer did not have a primary site; it never appeared in her breasts.
It was first noticed in her bones, where breast-cancer metastasizes.
We knocked that back with Femara®, the trade-name for Letrozole.
Femara is an estrogen inhibitor. Her breast-cancer was estrogen-positive.
Her breast-cancer just about disappeared.
Our reward for her being in the hospital was a cellphone bill approaching three times what it normally is.
Our cellphone bill is normally $117.70 per month. This time it was $302.30.
Verizon is making out like bandits!
We were punished because my wife was in the hospital.
$117.70 is pretty high, higher than the $25 per month my sister-in-law loudly brags about.
We get claims similar to this, like my brother can go from his bed to his desk at work 35 miles away in a mere five minutes.
That his turbocharged Volvo stationwagon is capable of 162 mph, a speed he’d have to maintain on Interstate-95 to get from bed to desk in five minutes.
For $117.70 we get two cellphone numbers, and two cellphones, one each for husband and wife.
Part of that $117.70 is my Smartphone and its Internet access.
When my wife was in the hospital, our cellphones were our only communication.
But that’s Verizon-to-Verizon, so no charge.
Others were contacting her willy-nilly, including her 95-year-old mother in Florida.
Most of those calls are not Verizon-to-Verizon, so involve airtime to her cellphone.
During which the Verizon meter goes ballistic.
Ka-CHING, Ka-CHING, Ka-CHING!
Our cellphone contract has a 500-minute allowance, plus a promotional allowance.
Cellphone usage was well over those allowances.
My wife didn’t notice, because usually we don’t even come close to those allowances.
Plus usually our extended cellphone usage is on weekends, which don’t count.
But this usage was during the week, plus everyone was calling her.
Ka-CHING, Ka-CHING!
“Live and learn,”
my wife said.

• “Strong Hospital” is one of three large hospitals in the Rochester area.

1 Comments:

Blogger camerabanger said...

put people you talk to most in your circle. no charge.

tell people who call that they should call later in the evening or keep it short!

How's that for mastery of the obvious?

12:38 PM  

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