I always thought I was sort of bulletproof until it was proven that I wasn’t.
I went from over confident to completely humbled due to a devastating injury due to a car accident. One moment I was adjusting the air conditioning in my car on a leisurely drive down the interstate and the next, I was waking up in a hospital. And talk about a lot of air conditioning, I remember just being freezing in the hospital room. I asked if they could turn down the thermostat and they just brought me blankets. Apparently, they keep the cooling at a maximum to limit the spread of bacteria and virus. That’s good enough for me because once I got home, my thermostat was actually looking after me. I live alone so I had to rely on friends and family to help me out getting to the doctor or to physical therapy. For months, I didn’t even have the ability to cook my own food. It was a long recovery process. But the smart thermostat I had installed by the HVAC professionals proved to be a vital addition to my house. At least I didn’t need help with the thermostat setting. During my recovery, I was in bed a lot and experienced every changing sensitivity to temperature. Thanks to the app on my phone, I could remotely change the thermostat setting from bed or the couch. It sounds like such a small detail but that really was something that I celebrated. It might not have been much but looking after my own heating and cooling needs was just this small piece of independence that I clung to.