Saturday, April 12, 2008

Blog Number 284

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I want to start out by thanking anyone and everyone who has helped us during this difficult time.  From the emergency people at both Medical Center of McKinney and Parkland Hospital, to the doctors, nurses, techs and specialists and stretching to the church friends along with our friends up and down our (what our neighbor calls Beaver Cleaver) street.  We have had so much sincere offers to help that I am starting to feel bad that we do not have more for folks to do for us.  After people see my son's beat up face and my wife in her sling and neck brace, folks just want (need) to do something.  It is hard for me to turn them down so for now I am just taking rain checks as this will likely be a long road to recovery for the wife.

Where to begin?  I have made a lot of mental notes of things that would make good blog fodder but let me just lash out a little here.  Yesterday I went to get what I could out of the van.  The daughter was concerned about her new ($3) flip flops and her gymnastics suit.  The good news is that most of our belongings in the van were salvageable (including the flip flops and gymnastics apparel).  It was a little surreal coming upon the van in all its crushed-ness, wondering how my wife ever survived and wondering how my son (who was on the drivers side) got off with bruises and scratches.  The man at the wrecker yard was very nice and I imagine he has to deal with people in my position more often than he would ever like to in his line of work.  So far my bill with them is around $300 with $20 / day for storage.  I am pretty sure insurance will cover that.  Next I headed to the police station to get a copy of the police report.  It seems that it would take much longer for the insurance company to get it than if I just got it for them.  I was banking on having to show my ID and prove why I needed to see it.  Shockingly, you just need to ask for the report by number and shell out $4.  The report said about what I thought it would say, namely that the other driver was at fault.  It was interesting to note that not only was the other driver almost 80 years old (her 80th b-day will be in May) but that she did not go to the hospital and evidently walked away from the accident.  Here is what happened...

Unit 1 is the lady who hit us (98 Lumina Sedan) and unit 2 is our 2003 Montana extended length minivan.  The wife was stopped at a red light facing West.  The light turned green (according to my wife, son and several witnesses) and the lady ran the red light heading north and hit our van in the driver's side.  Now our van could not have been going more than 10 miles an hour since it just started moving.  The other car was going fast enough to cause the damage to the van in a previous blog entry and flip the van upside down (at least once).  I don't have the math skills right now to figure our her speed but let's estimate it at "way too freakin' fast" (approximately).

The folks at the McKinney Police Dept. were very nice and even kept my wife's purse in the evidence room instead of leaving it with the other items in the van so I was able to retrieve that very easily as well.  I scanned and uploaded the police report on my insurance company's website (GEICO is too cool) and then called the insurance agent to confirm that he received them.  He had and he suggested that I contact the other insurance company and offer to email it to them.  The other insurance company's information was on the police report so I gave them a call and explained what I was offering to do.  Now, this is almost 3 days to the minute of when the accident happen and would you believe that the other driver has yet to contact her insurance company!  They said that emailing them the report would do them little good until they had a claim to tie the paperwork to on their end of things.  I don't know but this just surprises me.  The other car was towed away from the scene (to a different wrecker yard) so I would think one of the first things you would do (after confirming you were not injured) would be to call your insurance company.  Who knows what is going on really?

Well, I have lots of thoughts on the Parkland Hospital (and the McDonald's restaurant contained therein) but I will save that for another blog.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

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