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one thing our medical system is good at
Friday, January 26 2024
Not much has been happening in my job search lately. This isn't ideal, though Gretchen and I can live fairly comfortably even if I never work again. But today I was to receive a call from someone to discuss a possible job opportunity, and she said my landline phone wasn't reachable. This explained why my brother Don hadn't called in days. It also explained why the calls I'd tried to make from it always went to a busy signal. Our landline phone is provided by entirely digital technology somehow via our Spectrum cable modem, not Verizon (our actual landline phone lines haven't been used since 2020), so I rebooted our cable modem and only then did the landline work. The problem with this setup is that I'd had no easy way to know the line wasn't working. I'd pick up the phone and hear a dial tone. The only way to find out it wasn't working was for someone to tell me they couldn't get through or to test it by dialing in from a cellphone. The whole point of having a landline is reliability, and cable technology apparently can't provide it.
Once the landline was working again, I got a call from my brother Don down in Virginia. He told me our mother had contracted a "retrovirus" and was in an emergency room. Nobody had thought to tell him (or me) this, of course. He only found out when he tried to call the nursing home. In any case, I have little doubt that my mother will make a complete recovery. Our medical system is an embarrassment, but if there's one thing it's good at it's keeping decrepit old people alive well into their diaper-wearing years.
I'd went to bed after 2:00am last night and hadn't had much sleep. So I climbed into bed a little before 6:00pm (just as Gretchen as going out to catch a movie with Nancy) and ended up staying there for the next fifteen hours.
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