Cold Spaghetti

Our saga of trying to find a family insurance plan continues. And has worsened.

In trying to find a silver lining to it, this occurred to me. Remember back when Will was born, when I was pumping 6-8 hours a day, crying every single day, sometimes several times a day, sometimes so hard and desperately that Paul thought I had found the baby dead in his crib, and believing that my newborn baby hated me so much so that I didn’t want to hold him sometimes … remember all that? Well, THANK GOODNESS no one (let alone me, the social worker) had enough insight to consider whether or not I should have talked to someone about post-partum depression! Yes, I may feel guilt for the rest of my life that I didn’t put it all together in my head and missed all that wonderful bonding time that can never be replaced with my first born, but hey, at least THAT isn’t on my medical record!

The lesson: unless you are physically bleeding or turning blue, don’t ask for help! You may live on to become successful enough to start your own company — and then you’ll regret it!

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My hair loss has tapered off. I didn’t want to say anything and jinx it, but in fact, it seems to be almost back to normal. It’s happened over the past week. I’ve still got one heck of a lot less hair, but at least I won’t be celebrating Christmas with a bald head. Two weeks ago, I started taking a multi-vitamin because I started to wonder if I was experiencing a deficiency (it dawned on me that if I saw a woman with hair loss in my work, I’d think ‘zinc’). So, maybe it was zinc?

I don’t want to work in health anymore. Too damn disheartening. Too darn ridiculous.

Will is now done with summer camp.  Here are some pictures from his next-to-last performance.  (The one 3 weeks ago.)  The song was about a clown’s face… that’s about a close as I got to understanding it.

Will poses in his clown outfit… complete with covers on his shoes.  The teachers really went all out.

Will watches the bigger kids perform.  This was exciting because the bigger kids included….

Aya.  Will’s first buddy.  The ying to his yang.  The child who, when eating cake and ice cream together, without a word of agreement or planning, swap plates seamlessly so that they both get seconds of the one they like best (Will eats the ice cream, Aya eats the cake).  She was in another class and they saw each other during pick-up and drop-offs during the 2-week camp session.  There was one morning when Will saw Aya ahead of him walking into school.  “Mommy,” he said, “there’s Aya!”  “Will, go run up and say hi,” I encouraged him.  “I can’t Mommy… she’s TOO FAR AWAY.”  He said that last bit with so much heartache that I called out to Aya and the two of them started this back and forth (one would turn away and walk in the other direction at the same time the other was calling and reaching for them — and then they’d switch).  I’m pretty sure I heard “Love Story” playing in the background.

In any case, Aya had her performance and Will wanted to talk to her.  I asked him later what he was whispering into her ear.  “I was asking Aya if wanted to get a hamburger with me,” he said.

But it wasn’t meant to be.  Aya had to leave on a family trip the next day. Will seems to have recovered.  Yesterday, he proposed marriage to his buddy, Ana, when they were walking out of Abeona House together.  Then, when we arrived back at the house, he burst inside the quiet room and announced to Paul, “Daddy.  Ana and I are going to get married when we get older and then I am going to gooch her on the bottom.  And there is a tornado coming!”

Without missing a beat, Paul answered: “Yeah, I bet there would be a tornado if you gooched Ana.”

A few weekends ago, I took the kids to the Zoo while Paul worked.  We went to the petting Zoo area, which is something we rarely do.  Mostly because I’m afraid of what Kate might do to the animals.

Okay, that’s not exactly true.  I’m just freaked about germs and the threat of her putting her hands in her mouth after picking up poo.

Luckily, though, both kids remained very sanitary.  And both kids were incredibly gentle with all the animals.  Neither tried to ride them, hug them a-la Elmira, or put hair bows in their fur.  If Scout realized that a whole herd of animals got away with no-such insult to their general character or appearance, I feel confident he would march directly to their beds and hork up hairballs on the pillows.

Both kids tried to feed the goat hay.  The goats complied.

This was the first time I got to ride the carousel with BOTH kids.  Will is JUST tall enough (with his hair uncombed, he can pass for 48″… or maybe it’s 42″? whatever the cut-off point is for riding alone).  I was nervous that Kate would freak out at the moving animals, or she would randomly decide she was done riding half-way through.  She actually sat nicely through the whole thing!  I won’t say she sat STILL (she is Kate, after all) but she loved it.  Kate rode a Jaguar (I think).  Will rode a Rhino.  If you ask Kate, though, she’ll tell you she road the Hippo.

The plan is to spend 10 days steps away from the clear waters of panhandle Gulf Coast, starting Sunday.  I contacted individual owners of a great property and negotiated nearly half off late-season rates for a last minute reservation.  The place has a water garden (complete with pirate ship), lazy river, zero-entry pool, and 3 bedrooms so that family could visit while we were there.  We booked a ticket for Paul’s Mom to fly in for a few days and arranged a visit from my parents from Mobile.  I even started making and freezing meals.  With all the excitement about the upcoming trip (the kids ask about “BEACH DAY” each morning), I completely forgot about Murphy’s Law.

So after a relatively quiet summer, wouldn’t you know that this just came out…

My favorite part is the ‘sonnet les mantines’ … or ‘something in ma-teen-nes” … which is still better than I could sing it.

willfrerejacque

OKAY, already.  Now it’s a .wav file.  Sheesh.

The hair, the single thread, holding us to this place is fraying.  The primary care doctor I saw, one of the doctors Blue Cross Blue Shield asked to fill out one of the forms related to prescriptions that had been written, although she did not treat me for any illness or condition and did not see any of my medical records, wrote on that form that I had a history of ulcerative colitis and allergies.  While she was at it, she should have written up that I was morbidly obese, psychotic, and had cancerous legions throughout my internal organs.  If you’re going to shoot, aim for the heart!  So… while I have not been denied health insurance, YET, I have a second round of forms to bring to said doctor so that she can fill in more damaging hearsay and destroy our chances of ever getting health insurance again.

Let this be evidence to any and all other Americans living and working in this United States: DO NOT EVER SEE A DOCTOR.  A friend recently suggested using a fake name, traveling to another city, and paying out of pocket for any tests… literally, to periodically guess at what tests might you need to check in on your health, have them done out of pocket with a fake name, and then go about doing medicine on your own.  I admit it sounded a bit too far-fetched at first glance.  But actually?  After what we have been through?  It’s the best advice I’ve heard.

Is this really the future we face by choosing to live and work in this country?

Deep breath.  Positive thinking.  It will work out.  But wait… even when we do finally manage to get some kind of coverage (our back-up option is to pay COBRA $1500/month for 18 months and then take all the agencies who denied us coverage to court) — what then?  I am frankly too terrified to enter the system again.

Can we ask doctors to see us, but not make any diagnosis?  Ever?  Can they suggest medicines and then let you go buy them in some black market?  Is it possible to have a relationship with a medical provider that is under the radar of the insurance industry?

I’m actually a bit afraid.

And you should be, too.  Do you know that insurance agencies are now compiling a numbered system that can be sold to other agencies, similar to a credit score, for health insurance?  Consider each time you see a doctor, chiropractor, mental health provider, emergency room, community clinic, or medical laboratory to be like missing a mortgage payment… it’s a hit to your score.

Ultimately, insurance is a bet.  They are betting you won’t need it.  You are betting you will.  Each time you collect on their bet is a likelihood they aren’t going to want to play with you again.  Win enough times and you get kicked out of the casino.  At what point does it make sense to not play?  How can anyone be compelled to buy insurance if it costs them a fortune to have it, another fortune to use it, and then precludes them from ever having it again?

Considering the tight wallets on working families who do not have employer benefits combined with what it really means to experience the medical insurance business system as a consumer… having health insurance doesn’t make a lot of sense.  And add that in New Orleans, you get access to better physicians if you seek care in free clinics.

I would really love to stay here, to continue to advocate for working immigrants, the poor, and the disempowered.  Our family has one heck of a lot to give to this community.  But why should we bother, really?  In the end, is there anything for us?  I’m starting to doubt it.  This really could be the last straw.  Somehow, I have to go into this doctor’s office Monday — the one where the physician herself cannot be bothered to even speak with me unless I am paying for her time — and beg and plead for help in finishing these forms in a way that suggests all of her previous “history” notes were incorrect.  Right.

Meanwhile, we continue to hope that any random problems the kids exhibit go away on their own.  As for me?  I feel so frustrated, angry, and desperate… now it’s MY fault that we are not insured.  It shouldn’t be, but there it is.  What if I were really, truly sick?  What if I had a history of mental illness?  Or a serious chronic illness?  Or had a childhood cancer?  What would be the options if anyone in our family had that kind of profile?

I think that by the end of this, both Paul and I will suffer from at least one from the list above.

All this time I’m focusing on parenting technique, when I should have been thinking about laxatives.

h/t: boingboing

As posed by Will:

“Why does Spiderman wear a suit that stops him from picking his nose?”

Kate is a few days shy of 27 months, but just officially turned 2 a few weeks ago.  Specifically, she turned 2 the day of Abeona House’s first-ever field trip.  This ambitious trip involved a walk down Oak Street to catch the newly opened Carrollton Street side of the St. Charles Streetcar, a ride to Audubon Park, catching the Audubon Zoo shuttle at the park, taking the shuttle to the Zoo, going to the Zoo, eating lunch, catching the shuttle back to the park, getting on a Streetcar, going back to Oak Street, and then walking back to Abeona House.  With 18 or so 2, 3, and 4 year olds.  I know what you are thinking.  All us parents thought it, too.

When we got to Abeona, all the kids had changed into tye-dyed t-shirts that the classes had made.  I began to do what every other parent before me had done upon arrival: change their child into the t-shirt.  Little did I know that the inside of her shirt had actually been laced with hot oil, which dripped on her body during any and all attempts to dress her.  Her tantrum, complete with “No Mommy, it hurts!”, was spectacular.  I was actually speechless, almost dizzy, at the realization of what was happening. Kate is really going to do this 2-year old THING… which means WE have to do this 2-year old thing.  AGAIN. I regained composure and readied myself for parenting.  Was the t-shirt worth a fight?  No, it wasn’t.  Experience told me there would be more important things to fight about later.  I decided to be diplomatic, a strategy that once worked with two-year old Will, and gave her the choice, “Kate do you want to wear your school t-shirt like your friends?”  “NO,” she replied.  And so it went.

My predictions of continuing struggle were completely wrong.  Actually, the trip was a rip-roaring success, thanks to the spectacular planning of the teachers and incredible karma of the Universe, which aligned all necessary steps perfectly so that there never was a hint of waiting.  The kids were incredibly well behaved.  Even Kate.  Cuteness was everywhere.  Parents bonded; one was even hit on by a Zoo employee.  We really had a fantastic time.

(That’s Kate and her teacher, Allie.)

So everything was fine.  Kate was the ONLY kid without an Abeona shirt, but this wasn’t an issue.  Until lunch time. Sitting in the shady grass at the Zoo entrance, Kate opened her lunch box and found the shirt (I packed it inside just in case she had a change of heart.)  When she found the shirt, she scrambled to put it on — over her clothes, all by herself — so quickly that she seemed almost in a panic.  And it dawned on me.  There probably wouldn’t have been a struggle that morning at all, if I had just handed her the shirt and asked her if she wanted to do it herself.  How could I have forgotten? THAT is what being 2 is all about.