The Queen's Rambles

I swear if I was reading this journal I would be shaking my head, thinking this lady was full of shit or drama or negativity or something. It just isn’t possible for so much shit to be poured upon one person in such a short amount of time.

Oh, I know people deal with much, much shittier things. Last year one of my LJ friends (not sure you want to be named) lost her job, found out her husband was having an affair, and had her mother go through an acute health crisis in a four day span. My crap isn’t nearly that bad, but it is draining.

I was hoping my kids would avoid illness, but wasn’t holding out too much hope with my strep and the three cousins’ earaches. Sure enough, Erik woke up this morning complaining of a sore throat. Elsa was harder to judge, but she slept way more than normal and was cranky so I figured I better get her looked at as well.

We have totally crappy insurance that only covers practices in MD, DC and VA. If that’s not stupid, I don’t know what is. I think Mike’s parent company doesn’t understand the importance of good health insurance because they are based out of Spain. I’m pretty sure Spain has government sponsored insurance.

Anyway, that obviously wasn’t going to stop me from getting my kids treated. Doctor’s visits are actually really cheap out here, though I would prefer not to have a reason for a doctor’s visit.

We walk in, I explain we’re self-pay because I already know this. The lady gives me an evil look that says I’m scum. I was not pleased. I know we looked like scum. All our clothes are covered in dog hair. We were all sick. We didn’t exactly put on our Sunday best. But you know what? Who cares. Don’t make assumptions.

Finally we are called back to the person who makes sure our paperwork is right and that we have a source of payment. She got a lot happier when I showed her my medical debit card and thawed a little. I can see why she was stone cold. The people going through there were not exactly high class, but doesn’t everyone deserve some dignity when they are sick?

This lady was dumber than a box of rocks. It took her over 30 minutes to get us checked in. When I went on Monday there was a friendly, smart young lady who took all of five minutes to get me checked in. So it should have took ten minutes to check in two people?

Then the guy who leads you to the room and takes your vitals came in to see why she was taking so long and kept telling her everything she was doing wrong. She had Elsa’s name spelled as Else Passom. My handwriting is bad, but not that bad.

We went to our exam room, finally, and ended up sitting there for over an hour. There was only one patient ahead of us. I’m pretty sure the doctor went to breakfast before he came in. It was a nightmare, as you can imagine. We were in the dedicated women’s wellness room so there were things for Elsa to get into that she just didn’t need to be getting into.

Erik has strep. Elsa has an ear infection.

I was explaining to the doctor about her reluctance (understatement of the year) to take medicine and he decided the best thing would be to give her a kind of antibiotic that only needed one dose a day. The problem? It would cost $40. I told him that was fine. He was still shaking his head about the expense and I kept telling him it was fine. Sure, I’d rather pay $4, but this is about my daughter’s health. I have $40 for that. I finally told him that I knew our clothes were dirty and we weren’t looking our best, but that we don’t bring nice things when we visit Klamath Falls and I could well afford the extra expense if it would benefit my daughter’s health.

I was about to lose my shit at this point. We’d been there almost 2 hours. Two hours with a very sick five year old who refused to swallow, so was holding a cup full of spit. Two hours with a very active 13 month old who wanted a nap. Mama was not happy.

We drove home in a blinding hail storm, so that was just another level of joy.

Thankfully my sister was able to come over and watch the kids while I went to the pharmacy. My sister actually took my advice about something and didn’t immediately get in Elsa’s face when we arrived. Instead she took her time and made friends from afar, so now Elsa really likes her. Mama does know best, sometimes.

Anyway, the pharmacy was nuts. I thought it would be a quick in and out, but the pharmacist had tagged my case and wanted to talk to me. They needed Elsa’s weight (at this point everyone was calling her Elsie and I was getting perturbed. How bleeping hard is it to pronounce ElsA? I didn’t realize the dumb ass receptionist had spelled her first name wrong) to make sure the dosage was correct. Sure enough, the dosage was way off, so they had to recalculate and get permission from the doctor to give me the new dosage.

Also, they wanted to make sure I really wanted ear drops.

Ear drops? What ear drops?

The $297 numbing drops the doctor prescribed.

Wha?????

Either he took me seriously about having money or he was trying to kick me in the face. I declined the drops. Elsa doesn’t even seem to notice she’s in pain. And guess what? They had pain reliever/fever reducer suppositories! I stocked up on those and will use them if she seems troubled.

Erik took his meds right away and perked up around 6 pm. You’d never know the kid who was bouncing off the walls was the same kid who couldn’t move 2 hours before. I hope the trend continues.

I tried mixing Elsa’s meds in stuff I knew she liked, but she refused. I know we have to finish the course and we can’t screw around so I was really worried. I finally just tried a dose of the stuff straight from the dropper, and danged if that baby didn’t just suck it up and want more. It must be tasty. What a relief! I think I will have enough to give her the full course because the pharmacist said there would be some left over in the bottle.

I swear I am going to write that pharmacist a thank you note. She took a lot of time on a very, very busy day to work with me.

So that’s the kids.

Me? I was at the very end of my rope today and didn’t know what to do, but am feeling much better now.

My dad?

He lingers.

Yesterday they put him in some kind of sling thing and hoisted him into a wheel chair. My mom said it was horrible. My sister thought it meant a miracle was happening. She’s been telling everyone that a miracle is happening and he will be coming home and it will save his soul, my mom’s soul and the souls of all his drunkard friends. She is going to be the most devastated when that doesn’t happen because she’s not preparing herself. I don’t know that you CAN prepare yourself, but it seems like it will be better to assume the worst so you kind of have your head in that space.

I felt well enough to go see him today and I cried nearly the whole time. They need to be giving him more pain medication. I happened to get there right when it wore off before his next allowed dosage and it was not good. He was wild eyed and pleading for more meds. He has a big mask on so you can’t really hear him at all, which sucks because he wants to communicate. I could hardly stand it. He wanted something from me and I wanted to give it, but I had no idea what it was. I patted his hand a long time and tried to talk to him but I didn’t even know what to say. He looks really, really bad.

My mom just found out about the patient advocate at the hospital and is going to try to talk to her tomorrow if she is in. My mom is ready for all these little games to be over and the nurses told her to talk to this lady. The nurses aren’t supposed to have opinions, probably, but they know my dad is not going to make it and they shoot a lot straighter than the doctors. Probably because the nurses have to deal with the families all day and night, not just five minutes here and there.

It sounds terrible to say you want to end it, but he is just suffering. He is begging for a beer. He is in incredible pain. The nurses say he won’t do anything at all to help them, which means he will never recover because he won’t help himself. I don’t know how much a long term stay in the ICU costs, but I can tell you that Medicare only covers 80% of the cost. Drawing it out just to. . . I don’t know. . . not be responsible for making a decision? is just costing my mom a shit ton of money and not adding anything at all to the quality of dad’s life. It sucks. It really, really, really sucks. Modern medicine is wonderful, but it sure complicates these end of life issues.

So that’s the scoop today. Let’s cross all fingers and toes that we all kick these illnesses and are healthy for our trip home on Sunday. Mike went home on Monday and he seems to have strep. I told him to get his butt to the doctor sooner rather than later so I hope he goes in tomorrow. I’d never had strep before and didn’t realize what was happening. How do you tell the difference between strep-get-to-the-doctor-now and duh-just-a-virus sore throats?

Oh, and did I fail to mention Mike and I celebrated our 8 year anniversary yesterday? Or at least we tried to talk on the phone while Elsa screamed bloody murder in my ear and made it impossible for me to hear anything. We know how to do anniversaries, don’t we?