Now that I have told you all about the inverter, let’s take a step back and deal with the more critical electrical problem: the failure of the inverter switch. The problem manifested, about 10 days ago, with the refrigerator suddenly and unexpectedly losing power. I was panicked at first, thinking that the refrigerator itself had failed – a problem that could potentially cost more than $3,000 to fix. But after trying several things (checking circuit breakers, jiggling wires, voodoo incantations) that were unsuccessful, I, on a whim, flipped the inverter (the old one that never worked) on. It still didn’t work, but it failed in a comfortably familiar was – the refrigerator came on, briefly, until the inverter overloaded and quit. This was pretty solid proof that there was no problem with the refrigerator (whew!) and that the problem was somewhere in the rather complex circuitry that powered it.
New switch and junction box at end of installation
So I got, from the file of RV stuff that we keep, the documentation on the inverter and, along with it, the documentation on the inverter switch. This is the electronic component that automatically switches the power on the refrigerator circuit between regular (land) power and inverter (travel) power. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this switch was likely misbehaving. I pulled the cover off this box and the junction box below it, just to get an idea of the circuitry. I tried various things that sort of worked for a little bit, but then the circuit would fail again. I eventually gave up, re-routed the circuit to bypass the switch entirely and hooked it up to an external outlet. Then I ordered a replacement switch.
After a week of running the refrigerator on a jury-rigged circuit, I received the replacement switch. It took about an hour to install it. Much to my relief the refrigerator ran perfectly on both land and inverter power.
Total cost of the inverter and switch: about $300. But now, for the first time, I am confident that the refrigerator will have power when we travel.
Now we have to go somewhere and test it out.
As much as I hate spending good money on things that shouldn’t break, I am deeply grateful that it failed while we were in residence. Had that switch failed while we were up north, we would have returned to a refrigerator filled with thawed, rotting food. It would have been an unholy mess and I can’t imagine what the smell would have been like or how long I would have had to toil to make the place livable again. So if it had to fail, it picked a good time to do it.
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.”