Up Early, and Take My Advice, Please

Sleep alludes me most nights. No matter what time I go to bed, I can't go to sleep until 2:30 or after. 
Going to bed is not easy for me. Before I turn in, I take a bunch of pills. 
With a heart condition and Diabetes I never miss my night time ritual. And, if I have been sitting for a long time, hours, I wake up with pain in my back, legs and feet. 

This morning, my diabetes sensor awakened me. It is incessant. I can't ignore it. When I checked, my reading was 69, too low. At the same time, I had sharp nerve pain in my feet. I had to get up, eat something with carbs, and take pain meds, stretch, and use heat and ice for my back and feet.

Although I didn't get enough sleep last night, I can take a nap today. No appointments on my calendar! 
Great. I will finish my Christmas Cards and get them in the mail today. Christmas is almost here.

Life is Good.

Even though I have frustration and problems every single day, I am grateful that I have a lovely home provided for me. I am so thankful to be living in the same house with two people I love who seem to want me here. And---they love Lexie, which makes all complete. 

She usually sleeps late and gets up when I do, so this morning, when I had to get up early, so did she. Now she is back asleep in a chair, one she has chosen to be her own, with her blanket. I love that little girl. 

Sleeping Beauty

Dealing with Customer Service drives me Nuts!

For weeks now I have spent hours and hours on the phone with employees of companies I used to use at my house in North Carolina, but no longer need. I realize I made a huge mistake many years ago when Barry and I signed with Frontier Communication for our landline telephone. We made the awful mistake of signing for the company to take our monthly fees directly from our checking account. 

It was a no worry answer to paying my bill on time each month. But all the worry has come now when I realized I have been paying this bill months after I called to cancel it and four months after I sold my house. I don't get a bill each month because I don't need to send in a payment. It comes up on my bank statement. For months I had overlooked the fact that Frontier was taking 80 plus dollars out of my bank account even though I had called and canceled the account. 

Then the problem began. I called Frontier, waited for a long time to talk to a human being who said my account had not been cancelled because I had not produced a PIN for that account. Believe me that was the first time I had heard anything about a PIN. The person on the phone could not help me. So I turned to my bank and found they are limited in stopping an automatic payment from my account. The best they could do was stop payment on the last month's withdrawal. Needless to say, my week has been spent mostly on struggling with Frontier personnel who all said the same thing. And here in December, they have taken another payment for a phone that I don't have from an address that has not been mine since September 4 when we closed on the sale of the house.

The good thing is Frontier has a record of my call to cancel back in May 2024. Finally, today, in desperation while dealing with yet another employee, who had me go to the computer to receive some information I had to complete, she said. But her email never came through.

 At that point I was tired and about to scream. But instead, I told this woman on the phone in a very angry tone, "I know it won't matter to you or change anything, but I have a heart condition and breast cancer which gives me lots of stress, and now Frontier is going to give me a stroke."

She was quiet for a minute. I said, "I am sure there is someone there who could take care of this problem."

"Hold on a minute. Let me talk to my supervisor." The line was quiet for awhile, then she came back on and said, "It's handled now. You will be refunded immediately for the past three months and then we will refund to your bank account the rest that is owed you."

Now, if they will do what they say, I will be most happy. But why didn't someone do this a week ago and before I spent hours on the phone with those who said they could do nothing to help me until I produced a PIN? Just speaking to her supervisor took care of it all, but no one, and I asked to speak to someone else, but not until I told them about my health issues did anybody care enough to help me.

It is this kind of frustration that drives me crazy. 

And I have run into more than one since making this move. My message to you is NEVER sign an automatic payment plan where they can take your money directly from your account. Sales people will push you to do that, but don't. 

I am a big fan of Clark Howard who has helped me with another fight with a big company, and he advises to never sign an automatic payment plan like I did. 

When others have heard about some of these problems with big companies that won't refund what is owed me, I have been told, "Well, that is too much trouble. I would just let it go. Forget about it."

But, I don't have an income where I can just give away over $500 to those who would take it from me.

Be safe out there, my friends. Hope you are having happy times during the holidays. 

Know who to trust.

We need more doctors like Mark Hyman, M.D.

I am a big fan of doctor Mark Hyman, a medical doctor who is not happy with the status quo. He has a podcast called "The doctor's Farmacy."

He is thinking outside the box and teaching his patients and his listeners how to care for themselves. Many of us have learned over the years that the typical western medicine is not the answer for our health issues. Dr. Hyman learned from his own experience what he had to do and what others must do to stay healthy or cure their physical illness.

Watch the video. The female doctor suffers from autoimmune disease and hearing her speak about how western medicine failed her is eye opening.

As we age, our immune system fails us, our body breaks down, and taking another pill and dealing with side effects is not what I want. I argue with my nice young doctor who always wants to prescribe another drug for me every time I see her. I am not as interested in the quantity of my life as I am the quality of my life. Who wants to live a long life and be unable to enjoy it?
Not me.

I have made my goal for the rest of this year to put all my energy into taking care of my health, getting exercise, eating right and sleeping well. 

I purchased a gadget I wear on my wrist that tells me how much sleep I get, how well I sleep and how many interruptions I have each night.

It also tells me how many steps I make each day. I like that it keeps up with my weekly totals and encourages me when I improve. This is not the expensive FitBit. Mine is from Withings and cost about $40.00.

Just wearing this has helped me move more. I, like most writers, live a sedentary life, but now I get up from my computer and walk or dance or climb the stairs every half hour. I am putting my health as my top priority. 
How about you?
What do you do for your health that your doctor has not prescribed for you?

Sleep, Spring, and Super Bugs

After two days of fighting a respiratory bug that seemed invincible, I lie in bed tonight with Tiger on the pillow beside me, the rain pelting the new leaves on trees outside my window. My hope is that rain washes all the pollen away and I can open my windows again.

April, considered to be the beautiful month spring really begins, is usually a tough month for most of us who have allergies. Instead of digging in the dirt, planting flowers, and enjoying the vibrant color of the forests, the dogwood, and oodles of other trees I can't name, I watch from inside - inside my car and inside my house.

To fight the symptoms of allergy turned ugly, I take over the counter antihistimine which gives me a strange "I don't care about anything but sleep" feeling. I realized today, in that state between total sleep and aware-of-someone- in-the-room, I could hear that a tornado was about to hit my house and I'd just pull the covers over my head and ignore it. I hate being drugged. I don't like feeling I'm not in control of myself.

DRUGS AND CREATIVITY
All those writers who drink and use drugs because they think it makes them more creative, well, I could not be one of them. I don't refuse pain pills when I hurt, but I'd rather deal with it than be unstable or unsure of myself. Guess I could never be a junkie.

I had to cancel my class tonight. I am sorry that three students did not get the message and showed up anyway. I missed seeing them and hearing what they had writen this week.

I can't keep my eyes open another minute. Sleep is healing, they say, so I expect to be well tomorrow.