Still no gas...

I spent Friday at the house, waiting in vain for the city inspector and plumber to come by. We paid the plumber $300 on 9/1/11 to pull the permit and had absolutely nothing to show for it. On Tuesday, 9/6/11, the city inspector came by, but the plumber did not call us to notify us so someone could be here. The city inspector left a sticker to show that he had been there and that the plumbing company needed to reschedule. All week long, Josh had been placing calls to get someone to come back out and so the inspection so we could get work started. Friday was more of the same. I decided that if Josh's frequent calls were not enough, they needed to hear from me, too, so I started calling around noon. I was PROMISED someone would be out between 1 and 4pm. I told the customer service rep that I generally pick my kids up within that window and he told me to make other arrangements because someone would be coming by for sure. I left a note on the door when I left and picked the kids up in the office to save time. NO ONE CAME. I called the plumber back to complain and was promised a call back and never got one.

I had to cancel KayTar's pulmonology appointment yesterday (long story for another day), but since I had planned to miss class, I stayed home anyway. KayTar's feeding pump was in need of service, so I stayed here to get the pump taken care of and to wait for someone from the city/plumbing company to get the inspection done. I kept the pump at home with me, because I didn't know exactly when the tech would come by, so after I got an ETA from the company, I left the house for 30 minutes to bring it to KayTar's school so she could get her feed and I could then bring it home to be serviced. I left a note on the door saying, "HHCName/PlumberName/City of CityName, if no one is home call CellNumber. Will be right back!" When I got home, there was a sticker from the city on the note...but no one had called me. AGH! So Josh got on the phone again with the plumbing company and raised some hell. They assured him someone would come back out after 12:30, so I made plans to stay home for the rest of the day.

At 2pm, a city inspector arrived and said, "Yes, I'm here to do an annual foster home inspection..." I didn't even realize what he said at first, I was just so happy to see him! I brought him to the backyard and he said, "Is this a foster home?" I said, "No? This is a residential home with a broken gas line." He said, "I am here to do an annual inspection for a foster home." WHAT?! The stupid plumbing company had pulled the wrong permit, in fact, NO INSPECTION NEEDED TO BE DONE until after the work was completed. This was maddening, because we asked the plumbing company how the city was going to inspect/test a clearly broken gas line, but they kept telling us it had to be done. So absolutely nothing has been done because we have been waiting on this supposedly mandatory inspection. The city inspector was nice and helpful and pretty disgusted by the apparent idiocy of the plumbing company. He went ahead and looked at our in-house gas apparatus to be sure it was up to code so we wouldn't face another delay after the work is completed...and it wasn't up to code. Of course. We need all new valves, too. At least we know on the front side, though, I can only imagine how long it would have taken if we found out about it after the rest of the work was done. He left a business card, as well as detailed notes on what needed to be done and told me how to get the permit switched, in case we wanted to choose another more competent plumber to do the work. He was the first competent person we have spoken to about this whole mess in the 12 days we have been without gas.

Yesterday evening, the plumbing company sent someone new out to look at what needed to be done. They blamed the error with the permit and delay on the person they sent out to do the original quote. Whatever. You would THINK that in the 12 days we have been calling and asking for assistance and complaining about the lack of work, someone would have actually bothered to read the notes on our order and realize it was a broken gas line and an error had been made! The new guy gave us a new quote...SIX GRAND to replace the line. The first guy they sent out said it would be $300 for the permit and $200 for the work. First, they pull the WRONG permit and now we were being told SIX GRAND for the work?! The other option was basically a patch job with no warranty for $2300. They needed half of the payment up front, too. We are not the type of people to have thousands of dollars lying around waiting for something like this...we are the type of people who have two kids at home...who have had to take a pay cut to qualify for the ONLY insurance that will cover our child with complex medical needs...who are both university students...and who have one job between the two of them. We do fine, I'm definitely not complaining, but we don't have piles of money lying around, unfortunately. I suggested to Josh that it wouldn't hurt to look around a little, because it isn't like anything was happening QUICKLY to resolve this. We were both a little dumbfounded about it all and I griped on Facebook, as I am prone to do, and a friend saw it and put us in contact with a plumber they know from church. He told them to have Josh call last night (even though it was 9pm) and he seemed intelligent, helpful, competent, and told us he could come out this morning between 8:30-8:45am (a fifteen minute window!) to look at what needed to be done. He came by this morning, inside the time window he gave us, and quoted us a price for a total line replacement and new valves that was less than the patch job we were quoted last night. He will have diggers out here tomorrow morning to get this going and we will not need to be here until he is doing the indoor work and the inspector needs to come back. He will keep us posted so we can plan on when we need to be here, and we can reach him personally via cell phone, if needed. It still isn't going to be a cheap fix, but I feel a million times better paying this guy for the work than I would have paying the original company. We may actually have a stove, oven, and hot water by the end of the week...fingers crossed!

The moral of the story is that the John Moore jingle did ring true in our experience. If you call John...you do get Moore...more headaches, more waiting, more debt, and more incompetence. Learn from our mistakes...even when there is a seemingly emergent situation, do not just go with the first name/company you know in the field. Shop around. If we had gotten multiple quotes when this first happened, we'd probably have gas by now.


Disclaimer: This post is meant to relate my personal experiences and opinion, it is not intended to malign any organization, company, or individual. 


Edited to add: John Moore did release the permit like we asked, so we didn't have to file paperwork with city hall. They also refunded us the $300 we paid for the permit to be pulled originally. So we lost 12 days to this fiasco, but at least we didn't lose any additional money!

8 months! (knock on wood)

Today marks EIGHT MONTHS since KayTar's last episode.

EIGHT!MONTHS!
(knock on wood)

It is amazing, miraculous, wonderful. They used to torment her every TWO WEEKS. She would have had 16 in this time frame, instead she has had zero. We never thought they would stop.

I still think that the trigger is nutritional/metabolic in nature, that something isn't functioning quite right in the intricate processes of catabolism and anabolism, and that her steady intake of Pediasure is responsible for many of the positive changes we've seen in her health and development, including the decrease in episodes. The last time she was very sick, we took her to the hospital to correct her hypoglycemia and fluid imbalance sooner than we have in the past and I think that kept her from having an episode in a situation when she typically would have. Regardless of the reasons, I'm just glad they have been absent for so long and hope they continue to stay far away from our girl.

This year it is easy to get all of her Pediasures in. Every morning she gets 4 ounces of Pediasure via her g-tube before school, then we send her to school with 8 ounces in a sippy cup. She drinks it during breakfast and snack time at school and when she gets home, she finishes whatever is left and I make her a second cup. We try to get in one more in the evening. Usually by bedtime she has had 2.5-3.5 cans of Pediasure each day, along with food. Next year, in full day Kinder, we aren't sure how we will accomplish the same level of intake. It takes MANY, MANY reminders to get her to drink her Pediasure. If things are busy, she gets distracted. We tube feed her when she doesn't feel like drinking it by mouth. Next year in Kindergarten, she will be busy all the time and be in school full day and it will be a different ballgame. We don't know if she will need to go to the nurse for a full tube feeding at midday or if we need to invest in a pump for her to wear during the day to give her steady amounts of Pediasure throughout the day. We'll figure it out, I'm sure.

We're just glad to know exactly how important it is to her overall well-being, and thankful for her g-tube and the ability it gives us to ensure that she gets what she needs every day. Most of all, we're thankful for EIGHT whole months of peace for our sweet girl...she sure deserves it.