Mixed Messages

Sometimes it can be hard to get my message across. This happened to me all the time. Sometimes it's my fault, and sometimes it isn't.

When I'm talking to someone I don't know, find especially attractive, or both, sometimes I drop words. If I was trying to tell somebody that I like to play guitar it might come out, "I really to guitar." This spectacular sentence either leads to the person doing the old smile-and-nod, or a long and uncomfortable pause where we both try to figure out what the hell I just said. If they smile and nod then I don't always catch on that I've messed my message. I worry that I whatever I just said wasn't as funny as I thought it was, or, if I'm asking a question, how smiling and nodding makes any sense as a response to "do you want anything from the bar?" Either this person is lost in a fantasy about all the treasures that await behind the bar, or I'm not making sense.

At other times the message comes out fine on my end and the it's the other person who isn't holding up their end of the conversation. Take today for example.

People are supposed to have a mattress or a mattress and a pad. Medicare will not, under any circumstances, pay for 2 pads, or 2 mattresses, or buy you a pad and then buy you a mattress later. This lady I talked to today had 1 mattress and 2 pads, and was hoping, the sales guy told me, to replace the whole business with 1 mattress. But she was out of chances as far as Medicare was concerned, so she had to pay for it and wanted to see the mattress before plunking down the cash.

When I got to her apartment with the mattress, I took it out of the box and showed it to her.

She looked at the mattress and inquired, "does that go on top of the rest of this stuff?"

"No. This would replace your current mattress and the two pads you have on top."

"Well the problem, young man, is that I can't turn myself over. Things keep sliding down," she said, flipping the covers off herself and pointing to the mattress.

"Are you sliding down on the pads, or are the pads sliding down on the mattress?" (I asked because if she's the one who's sliding then a new mattress won't help.)

"Whatever," she replied.

"Well, I just want to make sure this new mattress will fix your problem before we put it on because Medicare isn't going to pay for it."

"Do whatever you have to, just be gentle. I'm very fragile you see." She gave a fragile little wave to indicate, I suppose, that she was fragile all over.

"Um, well, you can't actually try it out first. Once you sleep on it I can't take it back." (Also, I thought, I don’t touch patients. Not my job.)

"Oh, then take it away sir! Take it away!"

So I did.

Most of the time, my messages do get through, and then sometimes what comes back disturbs me. More background is involved for this conversation to make much sense: When renting a mattress through Medicare, after 10 months a rental/purchase letter is delivered. If purchase is selected we charge Medicare for 3 more months and then the mattress belongs to the patient forever more. If rental is chosen we charge Medicare for 5 more months and then take it back when the bedsores heal. Once we take it away, we can't give it back because Medicare will only pay for 15 months of rental over a patient's whole span of existence. So for somebody who will have bedsore problems their whole life, the purchase option makes infinitely more sense.

Me: (after explaining the whole paragraph above) Sign here and circle either purchase or rent.

Patient's Daughter and Caretaker: (obviously concerned about service after purchase) If I choose rent than you still come by once a month to check on the equipment?

Me: Well, yes, but if she heals then we'll have to take the mattress and we won't be able to rent it to her again if her sores come back.

PDAC: Yeah, well I can control whether or not everything heals up.

Jesus Christ on a cracker! This lady was on the verge of deciding that a pressure sore here and there over the next 10 or so years of her mother's life was a worth while exchange for monthly service visits.

This situation is exactly the kind of thing that makes me think that people, in general, are nuts.