Greetings and Salutations Faithful Stapleton Blog Readers
Well its time for another weekly update so here I go. As you can tell from last few posts there has been movement on the claims front. I lit some fires last Monday and saw a whole bunch of action last week. They finally totaled Jess’s car which was a relief (they were up to about $11K in damages and still wanted to fix it). However in the end the insurance company and adjuster saw reason and totaled Jess’s 2004 Camry. (Or as I like to say it’s gave its life so that others could live, mainly my wife and all the other cars that will benefit from its newly attained organ donor status). So as you can see from the post immediately before this one; we bought another Camry. Jess picked out a 2008 LE with the optional Sun Roof, Spoiler, & Rims. The car is really sharp, we received another great deal from Fannin, and we are both happy with the choice.
As for Jess on the medical front; she continues to improve but this process is measured in inches not feet. Sometimes she is a little discouraged that she’s not jumping tall buildings at a single bound, but I remember a few weeks back when she couldn’t get dressed by herself. I continue to see improvement in her everyday; she continues to do therapy at least four times a week and is obeying all the doctors’ orders (funny I will have to see how he accomplishes this). This may cause you to ask “Jake how did she go car shopping if she is in so much pain?†In a word “drugs†lots and lots of them, unfortunately since it took so long to total the car we were left with a very short window to car shop. She did most of her research online and so we only had to drive 5 vehicles. We did this over the course of 2 days totaling about 8 hours. In return Jess was in unbearable pain on Saturday night (drugs no longer helped) and unable to function even in her limited capacity most of Sunday. This reaction further reinforced the fact that she is no way ready to return to work yet.
She could work from home a little but that’s about it, no way could she go out and do home visits. It was very painful for her to drive her new car home from Kentucky and that was all interstate. I know it may seem a little silly to put her through all this just to get a car but the fact is with my travel I can not always be around to provide her a vehicle to get to therapy and our rental coverage was about to expire. There is also the fact that I am trying to return her to some normalcy and having a car of her own is a step in the right direction. I am very proud of all the progress Jess has made and continues to make. It will just take time for her to get back to the place where I am afraid of her again.
Jake’s thoughts on the cars we drove
My personal observations on the vehicles we drove. My favorite was the Camry followed up very closely by the Accord and I did not care too much for the Altima. Although during this process, I did decide to order an Avalon as my next company car.
As for me I spent a splendid week in the home office doing system testing. This is not a fun aspect of my job but it is a necessary burden. I had two vacation days left so I took them for February 11th & 12th. This means I am writing this on my day off, so I am out of here to enjoy it.
Have a great week!