Well, today turned out to be a little bit stressful. It all started about 5:00 am this morning. I got up nice and early so that I could call my wife, who has already gone over to England with our daughter. (left on Monday). At the risk of giving too many details, I hopped on my Vonage line (500 minute second line for $14.99) and called her. Now, let me side track the conversation for a second. It is absolutely amazing to me that my voice can be converted to packets of data, and sent all the way to England in real time with a sound clarity that would make you think my wife was in the next room. All of this for only .03 cents per minute. Try that on a regular phone line. We have, by accident, and it’s well over $1.00 per minute. Better catch up telcos!!
Okay, so back to my original subject. So, I’m sitting in bed talking to my wife on the phone and she tells me, “I’m not feeling very well and I’ve made an appointment to see the doctor here. “Oh crap”, I think. First of all, is she okay? If something is wrong, she is a long way away. So, the conversation continues and we talk for awhile longer. As I hang up the phone, I start thinking of all the scary things it could be. And, if that isn’t bad enough, a thought occurs to me. “Uhhhh, what about our health insurance?” England has a national health care system, that works a lot better (and cheaper) for their citizens than it does for an American who happens to be visiting. I start to imagine all the tests. What if it’s thousands of dollars? What if something bad happens? My wife could be in danger of something serious and as a second kick in the crotch, I could lose everything since my insurance won’t pay all the costs. If something happened to my wife, I’d need every cent I could find in order to care for my daughter and work. Maybe I should have bought life insurance for my wife!?!? What if something terrible happened and I went bankrupt as well?!?
[SLAP] [SLAP] Geez! Snap out of it. She’s not dying. It’s just a doctors appointment because she doesn’t feel well. Easy……. Sorry about that. I’m a sick man.
I was in a meeting all day today that I couldn’t take calls in. Additionally, I was offline all day and didn’t have access to my work email. (laptop had to stay in the bag all day). I have to admit I was worried all day. There is an 8 hour time difference between my wife and I right now, which meant that she knew the results of her doctor visit by about 9:00 PST, but it was 5:00 PST before I was able to get to my email and find out things were fine. Phew. I worry too much. I really need to start drinking more heavily or something. And here’s the capper of the day. The doctor visit was free! Why? My wife is still considered a citizen of the United Kingdom because she was born there.