Monday, February 27, 2006

Carol and I share a fun moment on St. Martin in the top photo and in the bottom we spend the last day of 2005 as the sun sets on the west coast of Florida at Madeira Beach. The next morning we saw the sun rise at Vero Beach on the east coast.
Doctor, Doctor, Give Me The News

Traveling can be a lot of fun. You get to live and see places on someone else's dime that you might never see otherwise. But there are some complications.

Remember this, if a staffing company offers you a high hourly pay, it means that most likely you will lose out in other areas, such as per diems, car allowance and amount allowed for housing.
After going through several staffing companies, we opted for one with a high hourly pay and per diems, but little or nothing in the way of benefits.

With this said, we jump back to last entry with Carol, the Traveler, in the doctor's office with an ankle sprain that's not doing too well. We waited almost five days before going to the doctor, hoping the swelling would go down. It didn't. And of course she missed work all this time. She was working for a rehabilitation center for the elderly in Avon Park, FL.

One of the first orders of business you should do in a new assignment is look for a doctor that takes you insurance plan. You don't want to have to start looking for one after the emergency erupts. Be ready ahead of time. Of course, we weren't ready, but it didn't matter much since we didn't rush off to the doctor when she first injured her foot.

The doctor we found, located in the near by city of Sebring, looked at her ankle and sent her down the street to the hospital for X-rays. More waiting. Then home. Now keep in mind, he did nothing for her foot, but told her to wrap it and keep it iced and elevated and take acetaminophen for pain.

Next day, we get a call to come in and see the doctor about the Xrays. He says he sees a chip in the ankle bone and wants her to see a specialist. We get an appointment in a couple of days and get to see the doctor. She looks at Carol's foot and the X-rays and agrees there's a chip but it will heal fine.

She gives (only in the euphemistic since of give - it cost a couple of hundred bucks) her and inflatable boot that makes her kind of walk like Frankenstein's Monster, but she is able to WALK. She also says she wants Carol to have a CAT scan to make sure there is nothing else going on inside.

So, doop-de-do, we go back to the hospital for the CAT scan. More waiting. About a week later, we get called back in. During the intervening time the doctor has given her a prescription for a mild pain killer, which we decline to get. Instead we went the Ibuprofen route instead, hoping to reduce the costs.

Eventually, the swelling goes down, the foot, which was purple faded back to its normal healthy coloring. It took almost two months. When we got the bill, it came to over $3,000. Now, keep in mind, no one touched her foot - except maybe the guy taking her X-rays and CAT scan; no one massaged it, or put pain killer on it or even an ice pack. Moreover, although the doctor we initially went to was covered under our medical savings plan, the guy who took the X-ray was not. We had no control over that. But the company refused to pay. It didn't matter. There wasn't enough in the account to cover everything anyway.

The point of all this is that we were healthy and hoped the medical savings plan would have enough in it to cover most of our emergencies. Who knew a fractured bone would cost so much?

When signing up with a staffing company there are some that will supply the traveler with free health care. The spouse and other dependents have to pay for their own. The one we are with did not offer free health care. They did have a health plan, but we decided against it.

But the extra money we received in lieu of the health benefit should have gone into a health plan, not just a medical savings plan. So make a list of what is important to you when deciding on which staffing company to go with - i.e. benefits, pay, amount spent for housing, medical coverage and retirement.

We went with the company we chose because it paid $1500 more a month than the last company we were with. They almost starved us to death, plus they did not even have free health care. They were making a bundle off of my wife. Well, maybe not a bundle, but they were making a lot.

We reasoned it out this way, we found out what the staffing company was getting per hour for my wife's expertise. Then we subtracted what they were paying in housing and pay, which is about all they were offering. This way we knew how much they were making. We went to another company and made more than $1500 per month more than with the last company. To us, that's a significant amount of money.

That's all for today. Here the answer to last entry's trivia question: One answer could be that they are tougher than people and are not crybabies. But a more scientific answer: penguins' feet are kept from freezing by their unique circulatory system. Arteries carry warm blood toward the toes, while veins next to them carry cold blood back in the opposite direction. The two bloodstreams exchange heat so that the circulation level can remain low enough to conserve heat and just high enough to prevent tissue damage and frostbite. Penquins feet have few muscles, Instead, their feet possess a vast network of tendons, which do not become as painful as muscles when cold.

Til next time think abou this: How can the relative humidity be under 100 percent when it is raining?

(These questions and answers are all furnished courtesy of "Imponderables, The Solution to the Mysteries of Everyday Life" by David Feldman.) If you want to try and give an answer, send it to me at Loosenutbtw@yahoo.com. I'll put the best answer, if not the correct one, in the next entry.

Answers next time and more travel adventures. Happy trails, travelers.