My Little Plan

Is Not Working.

The little plan was simple, don't get sick for at least 4 months until hubby's new job provides medical insurance. It was wrong. We were wrong. It's not working. We had the strep throat a few weeks ago, and now we have the mystery rash. Friday night I took the youngster to the urgent care clinic. The strange rash that started the day before had progressed from what appeared to be an allergic reaction to something, to a bumpy rash covering her entire body.

It was not so long ago in my mind when my little baby was admitted into the hospital to receive 4 blood transfusions for an aplastic crisis that resulted from a very benign childhood illness a lot of people have never even heard of called 5th disease. The Parvo B19 virus is the culprit, and most kids are just fine, barely even affected by the bug, but not my kiddo, she already had an undiagnosed anemia which combined with the red blood cell attacking virus put her in the nasty position of having only about a 4th of the hemoglobin in her body necessary to function. It was scary beyond words having my baby be that sick, but once the donor's blood started pumping through her veins she perked up pretty fast.

Ever since I've been very cautious when it comes to strange rashes, or any illness that gets my mom senses in an uproar, I've seen what can happen. I panicked, and I made an appointment Friday night after work to have my kiddo seen. What the doctor said in the visit, which took a grand whopping total of 15 minutes, was the rash was caused by a virus, and she has a sinus infection. I had no idea her sinuses were even infected at all, but they were. He gave me a prescription for Omniflex, or something along that name, and we headed to the 24 hour Walgreen's store, where the very kind clerk informed me that the drug would cost $129.00! Being a polite sort, she was generous enough to call the doctor and ask if there was not something else that he would like to prescribe for the sinus infection since we were poor middle class Americans with no health insurance. He decided on good ole Augmentin, and we forked over $60.00 instead. A small price to pay all things considered.

And you know what else? I've found it's kind of embarrassing explaining to people why on earth as a 35 year old I wouldn't think ahead and have insurance. They sort of just look at you like "Oh, what a shame." Guess what, we're going to pay for it, and pay and pay and pay if things keep up. The doc wants us to pay a visit to the hemotologist, oh yeah right. Uh huh. Guess what, hemotologists generally do not have payment plans, and usually want cash up front for an office visit, which is all well and good, but the last time we saw the hemotologist we actually HAD insurance, and we still forked over $140.00! That was just a wee little co-pay you see. I can't imagine what it would cost without insurance.

Whoa, of course I realize there is no price on my kid's health. Yes, I'm watching her like a hawk right now, and I'm just crazy enough to head to the E.R. if things don't seem right. At this point, she's only been on the antibiotics for 24 hours so we will see how she is each day. One day at a time. So far I'm not real happy with the progress, she doesn't seem all that much better, and the rash is still presenting itself. The rash is supposedly from a virus, so it may just run its course and everything will be fine, at least I hope so.

It's been sort of tough, thank God my momma is here. Hubby is out of town this week so I'm pretty much on my own with it all, and it's been super busy at work, I couldn't even get the time off, of course if things were much worse, I would have had to insist that I be excused from work, but I hate doing that. I'm so lucky my employer is very kind and understanding, so if I had called in it probably would have been okay, but I managed to make it through without calling off.

I have the next few days off as luck would have it, so I can really watch her and also get her in somewhere if needed. I think we get health insurance in July or something. Oh and did I mention that my throat is starting to hurt? Oh well, that's life. As they say, "it could always be worse."