Damn that Mrs. Overlord!

Medical Emergency Edition...


I had intended to blog a bit before the holiday season made this problematic (I've been working on a magnum opus as to why this IS NOT a "Christian Country", just in time for Jesus' birthday), but this has to be back-burnered for a little bit as Mrs. Overlord was hospitalized, briefly.

She's fine, but it was a pretty scary thing involving an arrhythmia, and complicated by the fact she has Muscular Dystrophy. She's in no immediate danger, and is resting comfortably at home, but my time now -- as you might imagine -- is rather pre-occupied.

I, do, however, have one nugget of pitiful stupidity to bestow upon you today that makes me wonder if this world isn't really the equivalent of an intergalactic ant farm full of loony formicidae (that's Latin for "ants", Numbnuts) created for the amusement of the Aliens.

Anyway, upon returning home from the ER last night, I turned on Mrs. Overlord's oxygen concentrator, only to have the compressor stall on it, several times. No worries: I have a back-up, portable concentrator, and if worst came to worst, we always have approximately 72 hours of bottled oxygen on hand.

So, I called the respiratory company and asked them to send me a replacement.  The guy on the phone told me he'd have one here sometime today, and I would be receiving a call on what time to expect delivery (this is my life, sometimes, sitting around the house all day waiting for medical deliveries).

Well, by this afternoon, I had not received that call, so I called back to get an update. Long story short, the nice young lady on the other end of the phone tells me she can't find our account details, despite the fact that we've been customers for three years, and they had no trouble locating us to send a bill earlier this week.

She asks for our address.

She asks for telephone numbers.

She asks for Social Security numbers.

Birthdates.

My mother's Maiden Name.

The Atomic weight of Vanadium.

A stool sample.


No matter what information she  is given she just cannot locate this account.

Finally, I ask to speak to a supervisor...and now the problem becomes clear.

As a prelude to transferring me to her supervisor, she wants to verify all of the information I have given her. She reads it back, and I begin to notice something strange.

Every number I have given her is being repeated back to me in backwards order.

Backwards address, backwards zip code, backwards phone number. So, I had to ask.

"Miss, are you dyslexic?"

And the answer was "yes...how did you know?"

Lucky guess.

So, I finally get to speak to a supervisor, and after I get the information I need, I tell him of my experience with the young lady who is dealing with patients who may have genuine medical emergencies (dammit, it's a respiratory supply company! What happens when you send a technician or oxygen to the wrong address? Are patients supposed to hold their breath until you straighten the error out?), and the potential for disaster, but...

He barely spoke English, so I don't think the message got through.

So, just to let the authorities know, if Mrs. Overlord does not survive the holidays it wasn't my fault.

But she'll most likely live. She has not completed her mission of driving me completely insane before the Grim Reaper comes a'knockin'. In the meantime I'm beginning to view that bottle of Drano with a longing, as all this extra time together means I get to listen to a continuous flow of inane mush that originates in the deepest contents of the feminine brain.

I think I've said this here before, but Mrs. Overlord is a motor mouth, and her memory for the tiniest details of what she wore on September 14th, 1983 -- morning, afternoon, and evening -- is prodigious.