Part of Here I Will not Miss

I have some advice for you--don't get cancer. Or any disease that will make you use health care facilities and providers and cause them to bill you.

It can be a circus. A full-out clown car, three-ring festivity with no one accountable.

Here, in my case, you can't even personally visit customer service and settle your bills. The customer service agent has to literally move between computers for the three different billing systems they use--one for the hospital, one for labs and one for physicians.

And even after all the aerobics they can't always find all your accounts. To cut out the crazy, let's just say my husband and I both recently tried to settle all our healthcare bills, even though some were still billing incorrectly.

Pay it and be done with it, right, so we could move the hell on?

Even though we were both assured there were no more bills anywhere, anyhow, there is still a bill.

So I call about it, but do you think I received apologies for my inconvenience?

Of course you don't, you know how this works--I was told how everything is my fault because I didn't ask to pay the specific bill I didn't know about and the one they obviously couldn't find those days we each went in, checkbook in hands.

Really? First, where is the customer service? Second, what kind of billing manager (who I requested to work with when I insisted they check absolutely everything and have someone who knows more doublecheck everything again) doesn't take all the money due when the person (people) were right there twice trying to give it.

Really!!!!!!!!

I complained about the rude way I was treated to the hospital ombudsman and the cancer advocate. So far haven't heard back from either.

We leave tomorrow, and I have a bad feeling this won't be settled even after I take it on for the fourth time this afternoon--in the very tiny window I have between movers leaving and picking up my son.

Big scream, curse words, all of it.