1500-watt inverter, installed
For those one or two of you who read this blog regularly, you may recall that I complained some time back – certainly in the summer of 2017 and perhaps earlier than that – that our RV inverter – the electronic device that is supposed to provide AC power to our residential refrigerator while we traveled – wasn’t working. In fact it never, ever worked. Not once. Each time in cut in it almost immediately cut out, apparently due to what it perceived as an overload of its circuit. Consequently we have never been able to have the refrigerator operating while we traveled, which added an extra level of stress to each trip. We could be pretty comfortable with trips of less than 4 hours because the freezer was still below freezing when we arrived. But as we approached 5 hours on the road the freezer temperature creeped close to 32, running the risk of things thawing and bacteria growing. At the very least all of the ice in the ice dispenser would start to melt, creating an ungodly mess.
You might also remember that I complained about this to Camping World. It wasn’t really Camping World’s fault – it should have fallen on the manufacturer, Thor Industries. But it cost us $67 to have the less-than-brilliant technicians at Camping World look at the problem and declare that the culprit was a weak battery. Uh, guys, what part of “never, ever worked” (even when both the inverter and battery were brand new) did you not understand?
Beyond annoying. Infuriating.
Anyway, for a long time I thought that there was something wrong with the inverter. I eventually came around to believing that the inverter was fine but undersized for its job. The refrigerator was rated at 977 watts continuous consumption and the inverter was rated at 1000 watts continuous output. But the margin – 23 watts – was so small that if either rating was even a little bit off, or if the overload trigger was a little too sensitive, that it could fail to do its intended job. I concluded that simply replacing the inverter with a beefier model – 1500 watts – would solve the problem.
So I bought a 1500-watt inverter for $212 delivered and installed it today. Installation was a breeze – attach the 12-volt power lines and a ground, plug in the dynamic switch (the thing that switches seamlessly to use inverter power when the regular power is disconnected, either as a result of travel or a power failure) and mount it on the utility board in the front basement. Took about an hour. Initial tests suggest that it will work fine.
But I really won’t know for sure until we travel again.
If anyone needs a lightly-used (damn near never used) 1000-watt inverter, speak up.
UMASS Memorial Medical Center
The UMASS ACC
Her final UMASS immunotherapy infusion
Our summer in MA has consisted of (1) numerous visits with Jett’s family, (2) 4 months of hotel living at Extended Stay America (ESA) and (3) about one visit per week to the University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center. I have blogged previously about ESA and have mentioned her family several times – though not each and every visit – so now is a good time to talk about our experience with UMASS Memorial Medical Center.
We love it!
When we were deciding, back in May, how to deal with her new cancer diagnosis, one of the options I considered was renting an apartment close to downtown Boston so that she could be treated at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the premier cancer treatment center in Massachusetts and one of the finest in the world. A combination of factors, including cost of housing, difficulty in family getting to her to visit and, if we didn’t live in Boston, the difficulty getting her into Boston for treatments led me to decide to seek treatment at UMASS Memorial Medical Center in Worcester. At the time I felt that I was opting for a second-best treatment facility due to its logistical superiority.
I no longer think that it is a second-best anything.
I learned, when we went to UMASS for Jett’s first meeting with her new oncologist, that UMASS was partnered with Dana Farber and provides the same level and quality of cancer treatment as Dana Farber. That was very comforting, as was the fact that her oncologist was, to quote one of the nurses, “THE lung cancer expert at UMASS” with over 30 years of experience treating difficult lung cancer cases.
The UMASS facility consists of four large buildings on a beautiful large hillside campus overlooking Lake Quinsigamond. Jett’s infusions took place in rooms with a lake view, a soothing panorama that made the somewhat traumatic experiences just a bit more pleasant. This is a teaching hospital and one of the 3 Level 1 Trauma Centers in Massachusetts, so two of the buildings are the medical school and the ER. The main building is the hospital. The fourth building – and the one where we spent 90% of our time – was the Ambulatory Care Center, for outpatient care. The top two floors of this 6-story building are almost exclusively devoted to cancer care. The parking garage is attached, so we could park and get treated without needing to go outside. Very convenient.
The staff? Consistently friendly, pleasant, upbeat, caring, considerate and efficient. We never had the kind of poor communication and misunderstanding that tainted our stay in Flagler Beach. The initial plan for chemotherapy didn’t work out well due to a pretty severe neuropathy (numbness in the fingers) side effect, so the plan immediately switched to immunotherapy. I was initially concerned about this because my amateur medical sleuthing suggested that 100% immunotherapy was not nearly as effective as a combination of chemo and immuno. But after the one chemo treatment and four immuno treatments, her tumors had all shrunk, a result which our doctor characterized as “miraculous.”
She just received her fifth immunotherapy treatment and we are now headed back to Florida – a place that, back in June, when we took the train north to Massachusetts, I doubted that Jett would ever see again. The fact that she is getting another winter in Florida is due, I believe, to the quality of care she received at UMASS. The plan is to continue the immunotherapy treatments in Florida, then return to MA next summer.
Worcester will be our summer home again next year. And it is because of UMASS that we are now able to talk about “next year.”