Monday, August 27, 2007

I'm Coming Home!


Terracotta Warriors and Me
It was sooo hot and humid (34 degrees C) in Xi'an, but the Warriors were amazing. It was a whirlwind day, and so worth it.
I board my plane in a few short hours. I have so much to process and write about. It's been a great trip, and I'm absolutely exhausted. I look forward to distilling my thoughts and posting them over the next few weeks.

For now, enjoy more photos with captions.
And if you're really bored, you can check out all my China photos.

Zaijian!

Thursday, August 23, 2007

The Great Wall


The Great Wall
at Mutianyu (near Beijing)
I'm having a great time here in China! I'm doing more detailed travelogues here, and you can see more photos here. A smaller set of photos with captions is over here.

The food is great, and I'm being pretty adventurous (although I chose not to order dog at the North Korean restuarant).

It's nice to have a big enough fill and to actually have my band working. I'm not terribly hungry and am able to stop easily (quite handy when I was tempted to eat the entire plate of fried bean curd I had the first night...totally amazing food!).

I'm taking it easy today and looking forward to more adventures tomorrow and over the weekend.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Pink Toes headed for China!


Pink Toes headed for China!
Of course I found time for a pedicure before my trip
Hey! I've got so much to say and such little time to say it in. In a few hours, I leave for China! It's a last-minute trip that you can read about here. I hope I'll be able to update from Beijing - if not here, then at least at my pink toes.

I got my fill last week and it is actually working. So I feel like I've actually, finally joined the land of the banded. I want to write more about it and process more of how I'm feeling, but my entire last 2 weeks have been full of last-minute trip prep. It certainly has been interesting being under so much stress and losing weight for once during it (instead of gaining weight from the emotional eating!)

I look forward to my travels - we'll see how Bandster-friendly the food is.

Cheers!

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

More Insurance Seething, and a Bit of Hope

I’m still pretty ticked off at my clinic. The last woman I talked to (“C” of the Latest Installment of the Insurance Debacle) was very sweet. However, each time I have called her back, she has seemed momentarily surprised to hear from me. She looks into the computer and promises to get on it “first thing tomorrow morning”. Uh, isn’t that what you told me last time?

The kicker is, when I talked to C last Wednesday , she looked in my file and let it slip that IT DIDN’T LOOK AS IF ANYONE HAD ACTUALLY SEND MY INSURANCE THE PAPERWORK! This was the paperwork that had to be sent after the expected first rejection. The paperwork I called and followed up on and was assured was sent. She grilled me on whom I had talked to (I usually write it down, but because there are only 3 of them, I hadn’t). After a second, she started to backtrack and say “I’ll get right on this”… you know what’s coming next… “first thing tomorrow morning”.

At least she called me two days later to say the paperwork had been sent off. NO WONDER I was rejected on the basis of “insufficient documentation”. There was NO documentation. I’m still seething. A little.

Today I called my insurance company and talked to the sweetest lady (yes, I got her name and call reference numbers). She pulled everything up, noting that the FIRST information they had received was not until AUGUST 2ND. Seethe. Seethe. She did the magic electronic paperwork thing and said “I’m sending this off to corporate right now. Let’s get this paid for you – this is a lot of money!” I was swooning at this point. I got reference numbers, AND a time frame: 15-21 days.

I’m ticked off at my clinic – I knew I’d be rejected the first time, but the second one gave me a panicky shock. I knew we did all the paperwork right, but it’s still at the whim of the insurance company whether they’ll approve me. I feel like I went through a week of panic and not sleeping based on erroneous information and incompetence – of course the insurance denied the appeal – they had NO INFORMATION!! They now have 60 pages (!) of information. I hope that will be enough.

I should’ve called my insurance company a month ago, but I was assured by my clinic that everything was being taken care of. I know, I know, I learned my lesson!

Thankfully, I have hope now that my claim may be approved. Now that they have actual information and all.