God's Got This

Today, I, a customer service representative, make that a senior level customer service officer who takes escalated calls from other reps, yelled at a customer service representative of the insurance company who handles FMLA for my employer. I lost it and I'm not proud of that. I was immediately sorry and wanted to apologize, but I didn't get a chance to. Apparently she was not trained to take rude, yelling customers in stride like I have to in my job. She started lecturing and threatening to disconnect my call if I yelled again, which I hadn't planned on doing, so I just hung up in shame and frustration. Then I did something I haven't done since I was diagnosed with breast cancer three weeks ago. I cried. For a long time.

Bear with me as I backtrack over what led up to this and I know I'm being redundant here. A blog is a great outlet for venting selfishly and I'm afraid you've stopped in on my pity party. My employer changed medical insurance carriers for 2013. I had opted for a more expensive (to me) but lower deductible plan knowing that my husband needed hernia surgery, but having no idea that I would be diagnosed with breast cancer on January 2. For the first week and a half of the new year, insurance company H had no record of us in their system, not when we called, not when our doctors offices called to try to verify coverage. Needless to say, this resulted in much frustration and wasted time on the telephone. That was finally resolved, Thank God, no really, I do thank God for that.

While that was going on, my supervisor encouraged me to call insurance company A, who handles Family and Medical Leave Act claims for our company. He knew as well as I did that regardless of how much sick time I had accrued, I would need to have my absence for surgery and recovery certified for FMLA in order for the absences to be "job protected." So I called insurance company A and told them I thought I'd need "Intermittent FMLA" since I knew I'd miss time for surgery, recovery, followup appointments, pre-op appointments, radiation treatments, etc. I got the paperwork from them, filled out my part of it and took it to my surgeon's office. When I talked to them a few days later, they told me that all they could certify was the day of surgery and continous time for recovery afterward, not intermittent absences. Fair enough.

I called insurance company A back and told them I had been wrong, I didn't need intermittent FMLA; I needed about two weeks for surgery and recovery. Brenda, the rep I talked to that day told me that what I needed was short term disability and that she would cancel my FMLA. (Today I found out that this is where the real problems began. She was wrong. All I needed was continuous FMLA. I don't even have coverage for short term disability nor do I need it.) Brenda transferred me to Frank, who kept me on the phone for about 20 minutes taking information that I had already given previously for the FMLA, but that didn't seem too unreasonable. Then I called my surgeon's office back to tell them to shred the paperwork I had given them and that I'd get the new paperwork to them when I had it.

Then I waited for the new forms to arrive by mail or email or for a new claim to show up on insurance company A's website. I sent several secure messages that seemed to go into a black hole. Finally I called back two days ago to find that nothing had been done on their end. Over the past 48 hours I've talked to at least a half dozen of their representatives, received and printed out three sets of forms, two of which were the wrong ones, and spent hours working on this. As of last night I thought maybe this was finally going to be resolved.

Then this morning, just as I began my work day, I got a cell phone call that went to voice mail. It was "Sean" an A insurance company rep calling to talk to me about my claim for...completely wrong dates. Anyone who has ever worked a call center job knows that every minute spent off the phone has to be documented and explained and I've had to document lots of minutes like that recently. This is Thursday and my surgeon's office only fills out this paperwork on one day a week: Friday. Tomorrow is the last Friday before my surgery. I got off my work phone, emailed my supervisor to tell him why, checked my cell phone voice mail and tried to call Sean back.

When I finally got through the automated system to a live rep, I told her that I was returning a call from someone named Sean. She was not Sean, but asked for my name, date of birth and claim number and then proceeded to tell me that they had a helpful website that could be used for most concerns people might call about. That's when I yelled. They have told me this on every one of the countless phone calls I've made  trying to resolve an increasingly more convoluted situation that the website offered no help for. So this time, when the representative started off by telling me that again, I lost it and yelled, "PLEASE, don't go there!" .

I get yelled at multiple times a day in my job, sometimes cursed at and called names, but I don't ever want to treat anyone else that way. That insurance company representative was not personally responsible for the mistakes others have made and she didn't deserve to have me take out my frustration on her. It still pains me to think about it, but I've asked God's forgiveness, not only for raising my voice, but for the attitude that led me to do it.

After that phone call and after I spent some time crying and praying, I was calm on my next phone call with yet another representative, but they never did get things sorted out. Two emails, one more secure message and another set of forms later, I finally called my HR department. They intervened and they think the problems are resolved. I'd like to think that the paperwork Rick faxed to the doctor's office for me yet again today will result in my FMLA being finally approved so that I can use two weeks of my own accrued sick time for surgery and recovery. I wish I could tell you that when I go to bed tonight I'll be confident that the issue is resolved. But I'm not counting on Brenda, Frank, Colleen, Jessica, Ken, Laura or Sean from the insurance company or my HR department or my doctor's office staff to make this happen.

As my niece, Grace, often says, "God's got this." At some point today I finally remembered that.

Now one of our cats has gone missing. I'm praying that God's got her too and will bring her home to us safe and sound. If you are a praying person, I'd appreciate it if you'd pray for Sasha too.