Caregiving: a great start for the week

     Mondays! ... This one got off to a great start with a call informing me that Patti’s Long Term Disability medical insurance and private prescription plan had been “retroactively” restored with no lapse in coverage. Yeah!

     ... and last week ended with our wheelchair accessible van repair costing us absolutely nothing. (Well, except four days in the shop.) The gremlin was one of the computers that operate the van's technology and fortunately it's replacement was covered under the "Certified Pre-Owned" warranty. I joke that I feel like I am powering up a space ship when I turn the van ignition key, I never knew how close I was to the truth. <grin>

       The Employee Benefits representative who called could not offer any explanation for how or why Patti's LTD benefits had been “retroactively” canceled in the first place.

       Through previous ordeals I've learned that pieces of misinformation drift into the loop somewhere and are mistakenly “believed” by one network when communicating with another. When that network is updated ‘system wide’ that piece of misinformation gains credibility and will in turn be communicated to more interdependent systems. … when appropriate flags are triggered it can spit you out.     

     Yes, an extreme over simplification but it works as well for me as the most complicated doublespeak any bureaucrat can offer. Basically, computer networks communicating between each other are not really much different than the proverbial neighbors gossiping over the back fence.  <grin>