The Continuing Saga of Billy and Julie

If that physician’s assistant was a ginger, I was a teenage girl

Searching through Indeed for a job in Florida, I noticed a certain trucking company was looking for a yard driver in Auburndale. This was only a half an hour away from where I planned on living. Not only that, but they had a terminal in Chester, NY and my old shop steward from Yellow Freight had been working there since Yellow went belly up in 2023.

I called him, he was kind enough to put a good word in and I was granted an interview and driving test. Armed only with my determination, my brand new CDL medical card and my evaluations from Tesla, I flew down and showed up that Monday the way most people would’ve shown up at a gig three miles down the road.

Lo! and behold, I was informed by the guy who interviewed and tested me that I passed muster. I was already back in New York when this nameless trucking company called and said “they’d like to move ahead with the hiring process.”

This time, I decided to pack as much crap in the Tesla as I could and take the Amtrak auto train down. (For a more elaborate explanation of that weekend, see my article from last week). https://open.substack.com/pub/billymanas/p/my-long-journey-to-mindful-indifference?r=7fxmm&utm_medium=ios

Instead of driving straight to Julie at her dad’s in Haines City, I drove from the auto train station in Sanford, FL to the Auburndale Occupational Clinic to take the pee test. Julie bought two one way tickets for us to fly back on Tuesday.

Quite unexpectedly, I received a call from the recruiter at the trucking company to tell me that everything was fine with the drug test, but now I need to get a CDL medical card.

The laws are strange but when you join a company, your medical card becomes invalid. You need to get one for the company that’s hiring you.

Okay, hold onto your seats because here’s where everything began going sideways.

I responded that I was flying back to NY. She said that was fine and she made me an appointment in Poughkeepsie. For Wednesday. If I would not have been so enthusiastic, chances are I’d be starting work tomorrow.

Instead, I figured I could save time by calling the recruiter back and asking if I could test at the same place I took the pee test. The recruiter sighed heavily, but she said yes and made the appointment.

The CDL medical card is a federal requirement. The requirements are supposed to be the same from one state to the other. This is not the case. After I did all the things they test for in NY (blood pressure, eyesight, hearing, diabetes, etc) they walked me to a room and told me to strip and put on one of those idiotic hospital gowns.

Then this grandma with a lab coat walked in. She had four inches of brown and gray roots that gave way to an unnatural orange color and eye brows that clearly didn’t match any of the other colors she had on her noggin. If she was a ginger, I was a teenage girl.

She grabs my balls and tells me to turn my head to the left and cough.

“Oh my,” she said. “You have a big hernia.”

“I’m aware of this,” I said. “I had the surgery to fix them at Kingston Hospital in 2015 but the repair lasted less than two years.”

“Well I can’t give you a medical card unless you can get a Board Certified Surgeon to sign off that it’s okay.”

I told her that was really inconvenient, seeing as how I no longer had health insurance or income of any kind. She smiled and told me to have a nice day.

I was bugging out. The whole plane ride home I kept thinking how dumb it is to ask someone to see a surgeon and get them to sign a paper that says I don’t need surgery. Surgeons are usually hammers and, to them, everything looks like a nail.

So once Julie and I got home, I began discussing the possibility that home ownership and Florida may not be in the cards for us. It was a sobering thought but that’s what we began to think.

Just then, my therapist from NY (who I just had a final appointment with) texted and asked how everything was going. I texted her the story. She replied, “Are you giving up because you don’t believe in yourself or because you’re scared?”

Something inside of me cracked open. I am the author of a book that is primarily about not giving up when it’s difficult. About perseverance. About making it happen.

Julie and I sat on the edge of the bed and mapped out a plan of four different scenarios and how we’d respond to each. I told Julie about the “Burn the Boats” thing. She loved it. (This is one of the reasons we are so perfect for each other. We have very similar personalities with regard to risk/reward, goal setting etc)

I opened my laptop and began searching for Board Certified Surgeons. I saw a surgeon from Newburgh I met in 2017 for some other Crohn’s issue. I called and was told it would be $160 cash and they had an appointment on 4/15. I said okay but please keep your eyes open for a cancellation because we’re trying to close on a house and employment is the only stipulation in our way.

Five minutes later, the receptionist called me back.

“I just had a cancellation for Thursday at 3.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Oh and you still owe us $33 from 2015.”

I sighed and promised to bring $200. I did have a little emergency cash set aside and this felt as though it qualified.

The surgeon, of course, said I needed surgery. I agreed and I told him I needed insurance before that could happen and in order to get insurance, I need a job.

Because it was NY, he understood my predicament and signed off on my medical stipulation with the caveat that I shouldn’t lift more than 25 lbs until I get surgery. His receptionist faxed the document to Bizzaro Lucille Ball in Florida.

My assumption was that the trucking company was probably not going to hire me but I would be able to get a “no touch freight” job. I just needed to be able to drive a tractor trailer.

Before we were even out of Newburgh on our way home, excited with this new development, Ms Ball called me from her supervisor’s office. She said she couldn’t give me a medical card because trucking required me to lift a lot more weight than 25 pounds.

I asked how she figured that. She began to tell me about coupling and uncoupling trailers and landing gear and all the other things I’ve been doing EVERYDAY for the last fourteen years and it was apparent she had no clue what the hell she was talking about.

I actually had to look it up to see if that was legal. I never heard of a weight lifting requirement for a medical card. I have heard of companies having these requirements but never to receive a medical card.

It is only legal because of one small across the board loophole—physician’s assistants are allowed to deny medical cards at their discretion.

I was angrier than I could explain. This wretched woman told me to blow all this cash I didn’t have and refused to give me the card anyway.

Julie put her hand on mine as we were driving and reminded me that we were burning the boats.

I looked into her eyes when we stopped at a red light and went from feeling cursed to feeling like the luckiest man on earth.

We went home, gave away all our possessions that didn’t fit in the hybrid (95% of everything we owned) bid adieu to the landlord and jumped back on the Amtrak auto train.

I promise that overnight train ride was an experience I’ll never forget. It was one of the most romantic moments in my life and it included no physicality. We held hands long into the night and watched the eastern seaboard go by and as the sun rose we began to see oak trees give way to palm trees. I couldn’t help feeling like as long as we were together, we’d be okay.