SMH

Just chronicling for my poor memory.

My truck, a 2004 Ford Ranger has been riding a bit rough lately.  I don't put many miles on it and the tires have a lot of tread.  I put them on 6 years ago.  I have a warranty with the company I bought them from for free balancing and rotating so off I went to get that done.  During their inspection they tell me I have dry rot and should replace them all.  (With all we have on our plates with continuing to pay the bills that come in from our surgeries, this just wasn't going to happen.)  There may be some dry rot, but I couldn't tell.  So I had them just do what I wanted done in the first place.  They found an issue with one tire that needed to be replaced.  I had put some sealer in it when it sprung a slow leak.  They couldn't fix the leak issue and would replace the tire under warranty.  Only issue was that Michelin no longer makes that tire in my size.  Only way to keep all Michelins on the truck was to buy 4 new ones.  So now I have a BF Goodrich.  I avoided the cost of 4 new tires. 

It may be time to consider replacing the truck.  So I put the wife on notice that we might start thinking about that next year when we both start our Social Security.  That may let us make payments on a new one.  I'm torn as this one probably has a lot of miles left on it at 120,000 but with that many miles it will surely start needing new things here and there.  I also get nervous driving something with that many miles over longer distances.  It's just me and a thing I have about trusting a vehicle.  Instead of a new truck, we will look at Carmax and see what they can do.  My Son has had very good luck with them.  I would like a full size truck this time.  Have had two consecutive Rangers.  They served their purpose.  But my dreams are to pull a camper and for us to travel a bit and full size is where we need to be.  Just dreaming you could say.

Bills are still coming in from K's surgery in early December.  I should get one more from my surgeon but he hasn't even billed the insurance yet.  They usually have around 90 days to file insurance or they can be denied.  Not sure that ever really happens though.  The hospital finally billed K's stay to the tune of 171+k.  So we should be getting a bill shortly from them for our part.  It won't be near as much as I expected thankfully.  

As part of K's follow up she is seeing a GI as I mentioned in a previous post.  He had her get an MRI yesterday.  I surely wasn't expecting it to cost us as much as it did.  Insurance took care of most, but 20% was a bigger chunk that I expected.  I had one several years ago and it only cost me 100$ for my share.  Not this time.  Many times more than that.  And we still have to have her get scoped by the GI.  But that should be the end of her insurance issues, of course unless they find something.  But we don't anticipate anything.  They were pretty thorough in her surgery checking her out.

We are so blessed, we are doing well and we eat regular lol.  We are getting older and the things that come with it are on our doorstep.  It could be so much worse.

Happy Trails