matthew’s alibi

Here’s a brief note on my Sprint PCS nightmare in the hopes that someone googling Sprint will find it and avoid the same kind of treatment.

Last summer, I had a mobile phone from Sprint PCS, which I used for two months, while I was in Los Angeles, and then canceled. This week, I’ve been trying to reactivate it so that I will be able to use it out west again. I’ve spoken to four different representatives, all of whom have told me different things about what it will take to get the phone working again. The first one, working a Radio Shack, was probably the closest to the real story– I would have to pay nearly $40 in re-activation fees, plus about $50 a month each month. I decided to think about it.

I called Sprint PCS’s toll free line to ask a few more questions, and was barely able to understand the man with whom I spoke, but managed to gather that there would be no re-activation fee, and that it would cost about $45 a month to get me on “the same plan as last year.” Since I was having trouble understanding him, I decided to stop in a brick-and-mortar Sprint store the next day with the old cell phone in my hand.

The gentleman in the Sprint store told me that I might as well just get a new phone, because I was going to have to sign a new contract anyway. He showed me the free models. When I told him that the man at the toll free number had promised me that there would be no re-activation fee, he told me that this was incorrect (the third version– or back to square one, depending on your perspective…) He told me that if I logged on to the web site, however, there would be no re-activation fee.

I tried logging on to the web site, but had password trouble, so I called the toll free number again. There, I was told that I would have to pay an activation fee, web site or not. (The fourth version!) I asked to speak to a manager.

The manager came on after about five minutes of waiting. I explained everything I had heard from everyone so far, and he told me that everything I had heard was true, in a way, but that no one had given me the big picture, or something ridiculous like that. He then suggested that if I wanted to avoid paying an activation fee, the only way I could do that would be to go to the web site, log on as a new customer, and get an entirely new plan using my old phone. This way, he said, they would have to run a new credit check, but I would not be charged the damned $36 dollar re-activation fee.

I hung up and went to the web site. The web site disagreed with what the manager said, and claimed I would be charged a re-activation fee, but I was undaunted. The program had a javascript error, however, and tried to assign me a California number instead of a West Virginia number, so I got back on the phone with the toll free customer service. I spoke to another manager this time (I was told that there were 17 call centers that took calls at the same number), who told me the previous manager I had spoken with had been wrong, and there would be an activation fee, after all. It took well over ten minutes to get connected to a manager this time.

I suggested that since, ironically, a manager had given me wrong information as a part of a conversation where I was complaining about having been given wrong information, it might be appropriate to just go ahead and honor what that manager (and the other employees) had told me.

Manager #2, Ricky, checked the account log. The previous conversation with the manager had not been recorded. Ricky told me that if the prior conversation had been logged, he would probably honor the previous manager’s incorrect statements. But since the previous manager had not only given me wrong information, but also failed to log the call, he was not willing to help me at all.

I am exceptionally unhappy with Sprint PCS. They need to get their act together in a serious way. I suggest that anyone who is in the market for a cell phone stay far clear of them. (I mentioned all of this to my best friend, and he said that he has filed successful complaints with the Better Business Bureau against Sprint PCS before.)

Now I need to figure out what kind of cell phone I’m going to take out west!

I got a surprising amount accomplished today. I met with my academic advisers from Political Science and Philosophy, and learned that I actually will be getting some credit from my time abroad, which is very good news indeed. I had feared there for a while that my year in Northern Ireland wouldn’t get me a bit closer to graduation. Actually, at the time, I kind of shrugged the prospect off, and said I wasn’t doing it for the credit anyway, but faced with the possibility of graduating imminently, I’ve changed my tune.

It looks like I’m only going to have to take five classes this fall, which will be about average, and I may try and repeat the chemistry class I failed back when I was a foolish freshman. I’m not so sure that I have more of a shot at it now that I’m a foolish senior.

I had dinner tonight with Jason at the Asian Garden, after the buffet was cancelled last night. I’m absolutely heartbroken that it will probably be my last Asian Garden meal before August, when I get back, so I’m trying not to think about it. After dinner, we went to the Tea Garden (I had never been) and chatted with Brooke. The Tea Garden is an awesome little place, lots of atmosphere and class.

I went to see my potential apartment for the fall. It’s a nice place, although perhaps a bit further from campus than I’d like to walk every day. I really like the potential roommate: a lefty, a vegetarian, and an epidemiologist at NIOSH. He seems like a very good guy, and I’m figuring a good roommate is the most important feature of a potential apartment, so I’m thinking it could be the one.

I also went to the Sprint PCS store on High Street, and heard the third different version of what it would take to get my Sprint phone working again for the summer. Every Sprint representative to whom I’ve spoken has told me something different. It’s absolutely maddening. I’ve decided to just see what I can do on the web site. (After telling me there would be a fee to re-activate the phone, I pointed out that the representative I had spoken to yesterday had told me that there would not be a re-activation fee. I asked if he had a comparison chart of plans. He referred me to the web site. “There won’t be a re-activation fee if you use the web site,” he assured me. I cant wait to see what the web site says.)

I’ve taken a turn for the worse in the whole broken-heart business. I was, if not getting better, at least successfully keeping my mind occupied elsewhere for a few days, but these past few have been rough. I wake up missing him. When I’m in Morgantown, seeing friends and walking around, I feel good, like I own the city, like I belong. But I’ve not been sleeping so well. Whenever I see something beautiful, something that makes me really happy to be alive (and I guess it’s a great blessing just to feel that way so often — West Virginia now seems full of things that inspire startling and unexpected awe, moments of majesty, in a way I never noticed before I was away) I always think of how much I’d like to share it with Tom, and there’s a part of me that’s not yet ready to part with the expectation that one day, he’ll see these things by my side. I would love to drive him through the mountains, and share a moment awestruck at the beauty and glory of the world. That’s when I miss him the most.

I guess I’ll sign off now. I’ve talked again mostly about events rather than thoughts, which is something I’m trying not to do, but I figure there will be plenty of less eventful days to write about things less tangible. I’m really pleased at my discipline, having written three entries in the past two days. If I can keep this up, I’ll be amazed. And perhaps one day, it may even be worth reading!

So, as I believe I mentioned before, I knew there was something wrong at the airport when my dad was there to greet me, but not my mom. It would take something pretty significant to keep her away after she hadn’t seen me for months.

That something, as it turned out, was Wendy, the new Friesian horse, her pride and joy. I got home on Sunday, June 1, and the previous Friday evening, mom had been thrown off as she was riding on the far reaches of the farm. Wendy ran back down to the barn where my dad was working, and he went looking for my mom. She tried to get up and walk a bit, so as not to scare him, but it was a struggle– she kept falling back down.

They went to the hospital the next day, Fairmont General, mainly because mom had been unable to walk to the car after the accident. At Fairmont General, they x-rayed and CT scanned her, and ascertained that she had a problem with some vertebrae, but they couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t “degenerative.” After many hours at the hospital, and precious little information or communication, they sent her home.

On Sunday, when I got home, she wasn’t doing so well, but the next day, Monday, she was able to walk a bit, and I went up and met Wendy at the barn with her. She was having frequent painful looking back spasms, though.

On Tuesday, I slept late, and a few minutes after I woke up, around half noon, my mom started calling for me. I answered, but as always, she couldn’t hear me from across the house. I kept shouting “I’m coming!” louder and more irritably. I went into her room and found her sprawled on a chair, looking pained. I was still irritated about having to shout across the house to talk to her.

I tried to help her move a bit, but she wasn’t very able. She had just talked to Maggie, a psychiatrist-colleague at her work. Mom had told Maggie that she was having chest (and other) pains and couldn’t move, and Maggie told mom to call for me to sit with her.

Mom had a green-grey pallor and was covered in cold sweat. We decided we should go back to the hospital, but of course, my mom didn’t want me to drive (”you haven’t driven for nine months!”) so I called my uncle next door.

Before he could get up to the house, we realized that she would not be able to walk to the car. We decided to call an ambulance. She told me to tell them to leave the sirens off, as there was no hurry.

When the medics arrived, they tried to take her vital signs, but could not find a pulse or a blood pressure. Mom and I stayed pretty calm, because they hid it well– one of the medics said to the other that she wasn’t getting a reading, and I think she explained that she was “new” and unfamilliar with the equipment.

But the problem was actually that mom’s blood pressure had fallen low enough to be unreadable, and her pulse was not much better. After consulting medical command, they loaded her up into the ambulance.

Neither my mom nor I had ridden in an ambulance before. It was kind of exciting. After they got the IV in, and I called my dad, they turned the siren on. I perked up immediately. “There’s an ambulance,” I thought. “We’d better get out of the way…” Oh.

We decided to go to Ruby this time, our faith in Fairmont General having failed after the past few days. (I had a bad experience with the billing department at Fairmont General previously after some doctors screwed up some important numbers on a workman’s comp claim and then disbanded their practice, aside from the collection agency. It was a real nightmare.)

Speaking of money, I was told that when the ambulance arrived, there would be a “nice young lady” to meet me at the door of the ambulance to take our insurance information. They literally met me at the door and separated me from my sick mom to get the payment details. If that’s not enough to make a person wish for a National Health Service…

Dad met us at the hospital shortly after. He had been in Wheeling on business that day, but he was at the hospital almost as soon as we were.

I have never seen anyone in as much pain as my mom was. The spasms contorted her body and face in ways that I don’t want to remember. They were giving her an awful lot of drugs, but nothing seemed to be helping. They did a CT scan. (Her second in a week.)
It was her spleen, they decided. It looked like it had been torn in half, according to one doctor. Another said it looked like it had been chewed up and spit out.

What had happened, they theorized, was that the spleen had bled a good deal into it’s outer capsule at first injury. It took until Monday for that capsule to rupture, and at that point, the internal bleeding was massive. It was a tense as they decided whether they were going to remove the spleen.

The spleen was considered a vestigial organ for a long time, but it’s now known that it has an important role in the immune system. Removing it would have consequences– it may mean my mom would be unable to work with small children, which would be a bad thing for a psychologist who specializes in developmental disabilities.

Eventually, they decided to move mom up to the ICU and watch her.

She was in the ICU for the better part of the week. She apparently gained some notoriety– doctors and students were encouraged to see the “stage three spleen in room 8.” Apparently, when a spleen is as damaged as hers, it rarely stays.

Dad and I were both spending full days at the hospital with her. We ate at the Asian Garden three times that week, which made me happy.

Eventually, I would wander off for spells, down to the computer lab when mom was sleeping or had other visitors. The family and friends were terrific– I was really touched by how many people called and came by and offered to help.

After the better part of the week, I stayed at home and finally got a chance to unpack from Northern Ireland. Mom came home a little over a week ago.

She’s feeling well enough to be cranky, which we’re taking as a good sign. It’s going to be a long while before she’s up to her old tricks again, but it was a close call, and we’re all very happy that she’s home and (relatively) well.

Sick or not, however, it seems about a week in the same house is about all either of us can take. My trip to California will be a blessing for us both.

But there is an element of serendipity to this story. If things hadn’t happened this way, we certainly wouldn’t have had the opportunity for all of this family time. And for the extra time we’ve gotten (and for the love and care of all the extended family and friends), I am very, very thankful.

So it’s been a productive day, I suppose. Mainly, I just focused on recharging my batteries a bit, but I did manage to make a serious dent in the pile of mail that’s been accumulating for the past five months in my absence, (I have a lot of junk mail. I had no idea I got so much mail from non-profits begging for money.)

I also managed to sort out a PostNuke error on dawc.org, and geeked out a bit in general, announcing that the modified “music” version of the books module is available in the Downloads section, and asking some more questions about search engine friendliness and PostNuke. I added a bunch of web links too, to said money-hungry non-profits.

I also got my luggage. See, when we landed in Philadelphia, it was actually much worse than I could have predicted. Although the Philadelphia airport was lovely, it was staffed by some of the rudest, angriest people I have ever met.

There was a queue just after customs (which was easy enough to navigate, as it turns out.) I had four super heavy bags, well over 60 kilograms, and am staggering down the hall with them periodically toppling. Every time the luggage topples, people pass me in line. When I see this queue, I am thrilled– it means a chance to stop with my luggage and rest.

As we get to the front, there is a nasty, nasty man shouting at people and barking. There is an elderly couple who has come up alongside the line, to see what people are waiting for, as it is completely unclear. The man shouts at them for their stupidity. They point out to him, nicely, that there are no signs or indications about where we are supposed to go or what we are supposed to do. This angers him, and he screams at them that when they see a line they are supposed to join it. The woman looks like she is about to cry. If I were not feeling beaten down by my baggage, I would file a complaint about this man, I think to myself.

After being clapped at (Sir! Sir! clap clap clapby the ogre when I walk in the wrong direction (I was following the posted sign), I make it through security, and am glared at by an imperious old woman. Security is ridiculously tight. The middle aged businessman in front of me is made to remove his shoes. I get through without a problem, and follow the signs to a cavernous room, where there are giant piles of luggage. After some of the most thorough security checks I have ever seen, the passengers are left unattended in a room with their carry on and checked baggage together, as well as easy access to piles and piles of other baggage. I try to make sure my bags get on the conveyor belt.

The second flight is only an hour long, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and so is not quite as traumatic. Once I land, I see only my dad waiting for me at the gate– my mom, as it has turned out, has had an accident with the new horse, Wendy, and is not moving so well.

The rest of the story is not so interesting. Well, the story so far is not all that interesting, either!

I was happy to have my Wings Ole last night, and some Tofutti this afternoon, and Papa Johns for dinner tonight. I’ve missed the restaurants in Morgantown. I’ve got an awful cold, but I’m getting plenty of rest. That’s about all the news. I’ll try and make it more interesting next time!

I’m in a plane somewhere over the Atlantic. I’ve been asleep for an indeterminate amount of time, but as far as I can tell, we’re about halfway to Philadelphia, where I’ll have to wait for an hour before getting another flight to Pittsburgh, where my parents will pick me up and drive me home — another two hours or so. There’s an elderly lady behind me playing some kind of handheld video game that’s bleeping away loudly. She has been playing for hours now.

The flight was originally supposed to be direct from London Gatwick to Pittsburgh, but USAir cancelled the route a few months ago, and so here I am. I’m apparently going to have to claim my luggage in Philly, go through customs with it and re-check it to Pittsburgh. Now this presents several problems: first, my luggage, as befitting a packrat of my caliber, is about twice as heavy as it is supposed to be. I’ve had to check everything important from the last nine months of my life twice already, and each time, I’m terrified they will tell me “no,” and leave me frantically trying to decide which volumes in the mobile library that is my luggage will be staying at the airport, as my plane takes off from a distant gate.

The second problem with this scenario is the hour timeframe: having flown a good deal since September 11, i have learned that the capacity for airlines to do slow, stupid, or inefficient things in the name of safety is near infinite, and you can’t really argue, because who would stand in the way of the war on terror, right?

In Gatwick, for instance, I had to retrieve my luggage from cages that they wheeled out into the middle of the departures area instead of using the nice conveyor belt, because apparently the conveyor belt had been deemed a security hazard. The airport handed out a lengthy and obtuse letter apologizing for the inconvenience, but never really explained in what way it we were being made safer by having to stand around the departure lounge for twenty minutes waiting for our luggage to come in on cages.

And while I’m on the subject, can I mention how much I hate going through customs? They can’t help but be menacing, I don’t think, in those uniforms, with all the posters with horrific consequences of smuggling on the wall. And how am I supposed to remember all the bits and bobs I’ve bought over the past 9 months, much less make an accurate inventory of them from memory? In any case…

The good news is that this plane has the cool little screens where you can pick from a number of movies. I got about halfway through Catch Me if You Can before I decided I really didn’t care enough to make the effort to stay awake to finish it. I was thinking about watching Die Another Day after, but I’ve decided I can’t be bothered, at least for the time being.

The flight attendant just came by and told a nearby passenger that there are three hours left to the flight.

I had meant to write an update sooner than this — it’s just short of a week since my last posting. London was a trip. It was a good time, as usual, but my feelings about it all are still very mixed. I’ll be eager to be home, to sort out my life and get ready for the summer out west, but I’m definitely sorry to be leaving the UK. Standing at the gate today waiting to board was like being in a bad teen movie: cheerleaders and their ilk all over, and I was thinking about how unenthusiastic I was to get back to America, in some ways.

I’ve written more than enough for one entry, but there’s lots more to say about the London trip. I’m hoping to have some time to write in these coming weeks, and so I must remember to talk about my day on the set of a student film — what I believe to be the world’s first Mormon rom-com. Also, we saw Bombitty of Errors again, Sexual Perversity in Chicago with Matthew Perry et al., and Absolutely (perhaps) last night, so it was another big week of theater. And saying goodbye to Tom was as complicated and sad as I had feared it would be. I don’t know what to make of any of that. More news about London soon. I’m going to shut my computer down and read some more of Sparkle’s new book, Naked Brunch, which I’m really enjoying…

Note: I wote this on the plane yesterday– am just getting around to posting it now. More soon…