.
The day was progressing splendidly. Despite a general failure of no less than 3 apparatuses, there were other things to be happy about.
Then…a security notice popped into my email. I have learned the hard way to always be certain emails come from a legitimate source.
This notice looked like all the other notices I get from Chase, so I clicked “Review account”.
Finding no evidence of the charge, a whole $35.94, I dialled the customer service number and went several times around their menu of choices.
.
Finally, a nice man came on the line.
And informed me I’d been had. Again.
The security message had not come from Chase and now that I had clicked their link, my information had become available to another of those SWINE.
.
Another new card will be sent. Unwilling to wait through a holiday weekend for it to come by mail, I asked if it could be expedited.
It can be, but the agent could not arrange it himself as the card has first to be created. So I should call back in an hour or two.
.
“OK…what number should I call?”
“Oh, the same one.”
I laughed, or maybe I wailed!*
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There has been an absolute flood of advertising and phishing in my email of late, as well as offers of ways to eliminate it all…for a price.
Then there are all the texts that come through on my phone, often to do with our upcoming election. I don’t answer and after a while those messages became demanding:
“YOU MUST RESPOND!”
.
I think not.
Even if I believed those messages were legit, I do not respond well to being told I MUST do anything.
For now at least, this is still a free country.
.
Annoying stuff. Not earth-shattering.
In the meantime, I went to Clifton Park again, for a treatment I have not had before, though I’m not quite sure why.
Maybe it’s one of those insurance company requirements by which you have first to eliminate all other possibilities before you are given clearance for the obvious treatment.
.
Whatever the case, I am grateful.
The new treatment was much like the others, a nerve-route injection using x-ray guidance. Those have been helpful but did not offer relief for low back pain and neuropathy.
This time a different nerve route was targeted. The procedure took just minutes, without pain.
.
For the first time since 2007, I do not have pins and needles in my right foot!
It’s a sensation you get used to, along with the feeling of walking in wet mud and the nightly “freezing” when the foot turned to ice.
Those things did not worry me much.
.
Complications from a spinal fusion left me with nerve damage. Waking from the second surgery, the pain in my spine suddenly seemed a mere toothache by comparison to the excruciating pain in my right foot and the worst part was that I could not seem to make the nurses understand why I was screaming.
Following the original surgery, I was given a morphine drip which had a bad effect. Bad for me and bad for the nurses, I gathered. So morphine was not an option.
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That sort of pain makes you grasp at whatever you can for relief. In the end I resorted to screaming that I wanted to die, at which point I was asked if I wanted to see a priest.
Maybe if he brought an axe and chopped the foot off.
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By the time I left the hospital a few days later, the pain had subsided. Pins and needles I could tolerate. My greatest fear ever since, has been that the pain could return.
Occasionally I have had little electrical zaps as a reminder of the possibility.
But now I know there is relief!
The foot freeze seems to have gone too as a bonus.
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Furthermore, everyone I have met lately in doctor’s offices has been so nice. It’s as if I had a black cloud hovering over me for the past few years and it has lifted.
Could it be that my own attitude changed? There was one occasion a few years ago when I lost my temper when getting a real runaround over a prescription.
After a series of frustrating calls, a supervisor came on the line and spoke to me condescendingly as if I was a feeble-minded old woman. I’m afraid she got an earful.
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After that, I moved to a different practice but I felt someone had placed remarks on my file which followed me around.
Maybe it was coincidence that for the next two or three years I met physicians who seemed not to have time or empathy for my problems.
It doesn’t seem likely, does it?
But then…
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Airline passenger records contain remarks to alert the next handling agent of possible problems. Ticket counter agents may place comments for the gate staff and crew.
Entering seat numbers brings gate comments to the agent’s screen.
Long ago, I one day I dealt with a particularly nasty man and annotated his record. We were always short of staff so I had to help out at the gate.
As this man’s seat number was entered, he turned to glance at the computer screen and read that he was “difficult”. He raised his head and looked straight at me. “Difficult?”
Good job I didn’t write what I really thought.
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Spirea has recovered as well as the lilac. Suddenly there is a lot of life everywhere.
More about that tomorrow!
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*When I called back to have my new credit card expedited, I did not have to go through the awful menu choices again. “Magically”, after entering the digits of the compromised card, I got transferred directly to a live person!
Shame though, I rather liked the numbers on that other card. As if it makes a difference!
You haven’t posted in three days and seeing you are sort of a person who posts on a daily occurrence, I worries. Glad you are back. Hope you’ll have only lovely days ahead! Hugs!
Thank you. You are so kind. XX
Thank you, Carolyn, for your update on the happenings in your life, and the most beautiful flowers in your garden. It is good to know that you are not suffering the pain you had before.
Joanna
Good news, and bad news, but the good definitely outweighs the bad.🤗😻
The hackers are very busy. Earlier this week quite a few people on a WhatsApp group on my phone were hacked when they clicked on a link. Fortunately, I listened to my sixth sense and ignored the message. But it’s as if the hackers are only getting smarter … my question is, how does their brain work to be able to come up with such horrible tricks! I’m glad to hear the new treatment is positive – something like this certainly brings joy … just like your beautiful flowers do!
Great news about the pain relief following that procedure. I still flatly refuse to use Internet banking, and will continue to do so until all the major banks close down the last branch that I can reach easily by car or bus. I still have paper statements, and have told my bank manager that I delete all financial-related emails without reading them and they should send me anything important by post. The scammers are now using AI (according to BBC news reports) to create duplicates of real bank emails which they then alter to suit their scam. They can even use a genuine-looking url in the response field, which only needs the tiniest change (usually unnoticed by the customer) to divert it to their server. Another reason why I dislike the use of AI outside of any beneficial area like medicine.
Best wishes, Pete.
I have a friend in Florida who refused to even own a computer. Somehow he manages but it is more and more difficult to get anything done the old fashioned way. The issue of identity theft (for one) is the sort of thing our “leaders” should be focussed on instead of trying to sabotage anyone who might run for office against them. What pisses me off is that in the end the bullies of the GOP will get their way because their opponents are just too “decent” (??) to descend to their level and duke it out. It will be Hitler’s Germany all over. I don’t want to live in a country like that but I have no choice.