Follow me, I'm going somewhere...

Wow. I can't believe Christmas is only four days away! Where did the time go? No, seriously. Will someone please tell me what happened to December? Just a minute ago it was mid-November, I was almost finished my shopping, the house was clean, I was looking forward to decorating the tree and feeling festive...

Oh yeah, that's right. Illness.

You may remember that I had a bad cold/ sore throat about 3-4 weeks ago. Well, I finally began to feel better after almost 2 weeks of that, and was thrilled that Littlebat and Papa had managed not to get sick! But then Papa ended up with it (or some version of it), including a bad cough. Bummer! And then...

Littlebat started coughing at around 9pm last Wednesday night. I was a little concerned because it was a deep, rattling cough. He was running a low-grade fever by Thursday morning and was obviously not feeling well, so I stayed home with him. Then on Thursday night he started wheezing and by 3am on Friday, he was burning up (102.2). Well, we took him to the doctor on Friday afternoon and found out that he had pneumonia. PNEUMONIA! And it happened that fast.

And just when I was about to blog about all of that... I got sick again (with another bad cold).

So, we've all been sick. And fussy. And whiny. And stuck-in-the-house cranky. And even a little throw-yourself-on-the-floor, temper-tantrum-screamy at times (yes, all three of us).

So much for that last little bit of shopping (that I still haven't done). So much for maintaining the house (the laundry, the dishes, the you-name-it, it needs to be cleaned). And (surprise, surprise!) so much for sleep. Our sleep schedule (both naps and nighttime) has been thrown completely out of whack. I haven't even had time to read anymore of that book I was telling you about.

In the last couple of days I've finally started to dig out from under the mess. Which is a very very good thing, because we're having our annual Christmas Eve (Eve, Eve, Eve) Party tonight!


Anyway, next stop: my point.

I realized something important last week- how truly fortunate we are to have access to good, affordable health insurance.

We spent three hours at the doctor's office (during which we received a lot of attention) and were sent home with a nebulizer, and prescriptions for two hundred and eighty-eight (!) doses of Xopenex and a course of antibiotics. Our total out of pocket cost (including co-pay and prescriptions) was $35.

That's it.

The doctor said it was a good thing we thought to bring him in right away. He said we probably would have ended up in the emergency room over the weekend otherwise (with a much sicker little boy). But here's the thing- we took him in when we did simply because we could. Because it was a Friday and because I'm a worrier (duh) and because I wanted to be cautious (you know, just in case he had pneumonia or something crazy like that). Ha! And because we have excellent health insurance.

It hit me- after the doctor pointed out where his little chest was dipping in, on his side between two ribs- that as scary as that was and as awful as it was to hear that my son had pneumonia, he was in that moment receiving very good care, and that we were very, very lucky. He was after all, not even that sick. The doctor had described it as "a touch" of pneumonia. We'd nipped it in the bud. We were going to get medicine for him. And he'd get better.

I thought about the parents who do not have health insurance for their kids (or for themselves for that matter), how they probably wouldn't have gone straight to the emergency room for those symptoms, how their kids would have been much sicker by the time they received care and medicine, how that medicine would have been ridiculously expensive, and how incredibly unjust it is that we live in a country that's so rich, yet so poorly managed; a country that fails so spectacularly and so thoroughly in being able to take care of it's own citizens- especially the most vulnerable among us.

And I honestly felt sick- physically ill- in that moment.

I'm not really interested in making a grand political statement here (not now, not yet, maybe not ever). But I needed to share that.

Any thoughts?


By the way- my cold was short-lived (thankfully I recovered in time to visit K and M in the hospital, and get some great photos of their darling little girl- which I promise to post soon), and Littlebat (after a follow-up visit to the doctor this week and another prescription) is well on his way to being well, well.

And so... all is well. Phew!

Merry Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve!