Spanky's Place

I just got off the phone with an extremely pleasant lady (Shanelle) from St. Francis Memorial Hospital's Accounts Receivable department. For those of you who are unaware, I visited their facility back in June.

I have received the bill for my visit. The total amount is crazy expensive. How much does 1 night in the cardiac unit of a major hospital cost? I'm not going to give you the actual dollar figure, because that's not the point of this post.

My son is a senior in High School. Next year he will be attending college. He has been looking at various State and Private Universities, considering for to which he will apply. Earlier this summer we actually visited one of his "top" choices. Why am I mentioning this? Well, those 18 or so hours I spent at St. Francis cost more than tuition for any of the Universities we've looked at. It was that expensive.

My portion of the bill is, thankfully, significantly lesss than the total amount (I'm extremely glad I have good insurance). It is however, still huge. So huge that I am unable to pay it in one fell swoop. Which is what prompted my call to Miss Shanelle. She was helpful in getting me set up on a payment plan. Which is what leads to the title of this post. I should have this bill paid off in just a little over 27 months. I think it's kind of interesting how this fits in with the title of these posts.

So there you have it. Yes, we still don't know exactly what the heck it was / is that is going on in my chest. We do know (thanks to the wonderful, albeit expensive, medical attention I've received) that whatever it is, it's not likely to kill me. So I've got that going for me. I've had to make some budget adjustments, things are going to be somewhat uncomfortable financially for a while; but I'm here, I'm alive, I have a great family who loves me, good friends who worry about me, and a good job that pays me to build cool stuff.

You may hear me bitching (sometimes very loudly) about things now and again, but the truth is that life is good.