Today could have easily been a lot worse. Nobody is injured or seriously ill, nobody lost a job today, and... yeah.
It could have been worse.
That was that I started telling myself when I woke up this morning with such intense abdominal cramps I couldn't stand up straight. It was what I told myself while checking Iyyar's temperature and finding that he had a fever for the third straight day, meaning I really needed to take him to the pediatrician--a mile away by foot. When Barak got out the door with only minimal protest, I told myself reassuringly, see? It really could have been worse.
The baby who normally shares our babysitter with us was here today, even though there was no babysitter and I was, theoretically at least, working. But, fortunately, baby #2 had just gotten back from a different time zone with his family, and slept most of the morning. So while I was waiting for both the midwife and the pediatric nurse to call me back, I put both of them in their respective cribs with some toys (Iyyar complained, the other baby passed out instantly) and went to take a long hot shower, which made me feel no longer completely convinced that I was in labor. Picking up the phone when the midwife called back and describing what I felt like, though, it was a little harder to convince her. She thought I should come in. To the office that's a 30-minute drive away, because there was no one to see me in the local office today. The two 20-month-olds, one of whom is feverish and the other one of whom is asleep? Well, isn't there someone you could leave them with? Um, no. No, there isn't, and even if there were, two 30-minute cab rides are not on my itinerary for today.
So now I have an appointment for tomorrow, for the local office, but in the middle of the afternoon, when I will... do what exactly with my already-born kids, I'm not sure. The pediatrician's office called back, and said to bring Iyyar in to walk-in tomorrow morning at 8 am at the latest. That would have been flat-out impossible, logistically, without having MHH take a personal day, and since he's only got three of those we aren't about to use any of them now. So I made an appointment for 4:40 PM, called MHH and asked him to come home early. Which he did. And then Barak decided to go along too, so all three of them went.
Now we are having thunderstorms.
I didn't mention a few other things, like the lady from the Consumer Products Safety Commission who showed up to photograph Barak's broken and highly dangerous front-end loader, which has been hiding in the basement since small choking-hazard-sized pieces starting coming off it in August. "Iss my front end loader! Imma found it! Yay!" I had emailed her this morning to say that we needed to reschedule, but she was already out on her dangerous toy documentation rounds and didn't get it. (But how impressive is it that we have a government agency that does these things?! I mean, really!)
The doctor thinks that what Iyyar has is viral, did not see any signs of an ear infection and says to bring him back if he is still feverish on Wednesday. So that's good. I'm glad we don't need to give him antibiotics, especially since on Friday I filled two prescriptions for the first time in (B"H ) a long time and discovered that the two totally ordinary drugs that MHH and Iyyar had been prescribed each had a $50 copay PER MONTHLY SUPPLY. We are not talking expensive drugs for which generics are available, or fancy new recently-developed drugs. No. We are talking allergy and reflux medicine here.
Anyway. MHH and the boys stopped to get French fries on the way home, mostly to get out of the incredible downpour. They made it, B"H, in the dark and the rain across two very scary intersections, which is the main thing--MHH had the covered-in-reflective-tape jogging stroller and the geeky-in-a-cool-way flashing-lights high-visibility backpack. Like I said... nobody is really sick, nobody is hurt, nobody lost a job today, and even if I am going into labor, that could be worse too--I'll be 35 weeks on Thursday, so we're not talking major terrifying prematurity or even the potential for weeks and weeks of bedrest. And it's MHH walking the kids home in the pouring rain without a raincoat, not pregnant and possibly contracting me.
Perspective, right? Perspective.
7 comments:
oy.
with regard to the least of your worries, it's january - is it possible your insurance has you paying full price for prescriptions until you meet your deductible? mine used to do that and every year it scared me to death until i remembered.
we finally got aleph off reflux meds at about 11 months, but now at 19 months we're probably putting bet ON them... so i feel some of your pain.
Nope. I called. They are both non-formulary drugs, so a $50 copay. We have an HMO, so no deductible, but apparently not much in the way of an actual pharmacy plan either.
yeah, now that i think about it, i'm pretty sure aleph's was $50 a month too. it's been so long i'd forgotten the sticker shock.
B'sha'ah tova u'matzlachas - and maybe a month from now, without any further panic moments in between.
What LC said. :)
Also, you are the queen of perspective, if you ask me...
Someone tell me why all of the available asthma meds are 2nd tier? For us that means $25/mo, and if the inhaler contains technically two months worth, like say flovent taken only two puffs a day (200 puff canister = 60 days) then you get charged two co-pays. Even albuterol is 2nd tier! Okay, the CFC version is still first tier, but RI won't let any pharmacy dispense that one, so it doesn't help any.
But all that aside, I third the B'sha'ah tova u'matzlachas. And what Shanna said about perspective.
And I also don't know why these offices just can't understand why you can't drop everything and fly over there on their schedule. But sounds like you got them to bend their schedule to yours, mostly.
I have a really nice OB/midwife office. They will squeeze you in whenever, and my midwife will stay after office hours to see you if she has to--sometimes she is there until 8 pm. (Of course, the flip side of this is that they are often running late, but I'll take it.) The thing is that they have two offices, and there isn't always someone available in the one that is closer to me. So there really wasn't any option other than a) go far away, b) go the next day, or c) go to the hospital.
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