Yesterday Nyel and I — sometimes separately and sometimes together — spent seven f***ing hours on the telephone trying to solve Cinderella’s broken heart. First we spoke with her Mother Ship; then with the Mother Ship’s Controller. That took three hours. They needed us to find out some information about our modem and its firewalls. That required several phone calls to CenturyLink who was the supplier of our Modem and our internet service. Need I say more? But… just in case you don’t realize… here in the greater downtown rural center of things, CenturyLink is the only show in town landline-wise , and for medical reasons – see below — we need the landline.
Proudly CenturyLink’s robotic voice told us how they are completely automated now but… if we needed to talk to a representative, just say “representative” at any time. I cannot even begin to tell you how many different responses that got us — including several complete hang-ups, a robotic question “I understand you want to speak with a representative” followed by several more minutes of automated voice and THEN a hang-up. ad-nauseum.
When we finally got a live CenturyLink voice and told her our problem, she asked a number of questions about our question — as in what exactly did we need to know about the firewalls (which we had already told her) and why did we need to know etc. etc. We answered each question to the best of our ability — several times. Finally, after more due deliberation, she said, “Your modem does not have any firewalls.” “Then why,” asked my ever-patient husband, “are the Roomba people asking us to find out about them?” Would you believe… another hang up!
At one point, I was on hold with my faithful cell phone, hearing over and over and yet again over, “Your call is very important to us.” After forty-four minutes and constant repeats of my call’s importance, they hung up. Apparently the call wasn’t THAT important.

Cinderella Stuck on her Home Base
We would cut our CenturyLink connection in a nano-second but Nyel’s daily CardioMems* report is sent each morning via our landline. CenturyLink is the only show in town. And that report, literally, is a lifeline for him. Need I tell you how very scary it is that said lifeline depends upon CenturyLink? I wonder if there are T Shirts that say Rural Lives Matter. Probably not. And, in case you are wondering, Cinderella’s problem has not yet been fixed. Actually… not even diagnosed as far as we can tell. But then, after 24 hours, our internet access is still intermittent so perhaps the Fairy Godmother hasn’t been able to wave her magic wand yet…
*A CardioMEMS device is implanted in Nyel’s pulmonary artery via a short, femoral vein access cath procedure. It measures changes in pulmonary artery pressure, which are a surrogate measure for fluid retention in the lungs due to worsening heart failure conditions.