Cozy Germ Cocoon, with BS Knocking
Apr. 22nd, 2008 02:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameWe've been hibernating with severe illness. The oral virus struck me just as predicted. There is always something really sweet about being sick together. I suppose that sounds ridiculous, but I love it when I see Ananda dripping in sweat because her fever has broken, red-faced and miserable with her own sudden heat, and I can come put a cool rag on her head and watch her wolf down a plate of cold watermelon chunks. That relieved, slightly disoriented smile kills me. I love it when I'm shaking with fever of my own and about to lose my mind from the teeth-rattling internal freeze, and Grant suddenly appears out of nowhere, swipes away my blankets, and drops a new one fresh from the dryer on me. I swear I moaned and instantly fell asleep.
Last night I was sitting up on the couch, with Elise sitting in my lap asleep and Jake laying next to me asleep. I was dozing off and on and she squirmed her way onto him - they woke each other up, face to face. I was ready for sick-kid hysterics, but instead they freaking looked at each other and grinned, and then commenced to do things like stroke each others' cheeks and give sloppy kisses for about 5 minutes before Grant ran over with the video camera. They were sitting up at that point, her leaning back against him and his arms around her.
Saturday was not any kind of ok...G had to work 12 hours, I hadn't slept much and I had to watch Aaron crying and shaking with pain and fever :/ All while very ill myself. I was feeling like my arms weighed 100 pounds each, so imagine my..uh...we'll call it "lack of amusement" when I realized the solution to his dilemma was to drag the portable hammock he's in love with out to the super warm sunshine in the yard and let him lay in the fresh air.
Anyway, it worked O_o And since then "sick with help" has been a nice contrast to "sick here by myself", particularly when I'm napping or eating something G's cooked.
I was also rather validated when the huge pot of from-scratch chicken noodle soup I made for everyone was actually universally well-received. The last time we were sick and I spent hours making stock and chopping things, nobody ate it but Grant and I. Big improvement.
This "oral virus" is really weird, btw. I was drooling so much in my feverish sleep the first night that I kept waking up all wet. Not acceptable. Apparently (according to the pediatrician) my sister and Brian have such deep-rooted systemic yeast problems that their immune systems are shot, so basically anytime Brian gets sick, he mutates it into something way worse and then passes it along. Which is right in line with TWO incidences now where his little play group had a mild, 24 hour illness that landed Brian in the hospital and then got my family ultra sick for days. I think we are going to have to institute a week long quarantine on him from now on, from whenever he "seems better".
While we all wallow about with blankets and bottles of C-Boost and Gatorade, time is playing tricks on us...Grant and I's anniversary was yesterday. We had plans to make plans, but, well, yeah. I could barely lift my head for parts of it, so we're tentatively talking about using it as an excuse to celebrate belatedly...
And Elise will be 1 in 8 days.
And we'll be closing on a house "on or before" 14 days from now, assuming nothing drastic happens.
G and I kind of looked up suspiciously, earlier today, realizing all this in the midst of our haze.
My diastasis is HORRIBLE from 2 days not wearing my support thing (I just haven't had the energy to put it on, or the will to deal with wearing it) and the nonstop coughing. Everytime I cough, the whole big lump of drooping, hanging muscle (it's right above my belly button) enlarges drastically and jumps. It freaks Grant out big time to see. It HURTS, is my thing...and yesterday afternoon it woke me up hurting so intensely that I was really afraid, almost frantic - it was VERY intense pain. I felt around that area and actually pushed something back through, and then it went back to normal "Oh man this sucks" everytime I coughed. I mean that's what herniation IS is something (fat, organs, anything) coming through a muscular separation, and I've been warned that this thing is itching to herniate, but yeah. Alarming nonetheless.
G approached me today about going in for the whole reparative surgery. I look 6 months pregnant right now dressed, deformed naked, and hate my body desperately, but he is most concerned about having to rush me to the hospital again for some emergency procedure or other when I get something strangulated in there. After clamming up, getting nauseus and generally feeling like I would cry over the terror of more surgery, we agreed to talk more about it another time...I've sort of, semi-resigned myself to possibly going with some sort of "wear my thing as much as possible now, and have a consultation to see if it's actually really dangerous, and then plan to get this done when Elise is weaned and Ananda is over the trauma of me dissapearing to hospitals" plan...which would allow me to lose some weight, which would make the surgery less complex/dangerous and more aesthetically good.
Mostly I'm still shuddering. The last time I had surgery, I woke up in the ICU with a face full of tubes. The time before that, they left a sponge in me and it nearly killed me. And all that after I was willing to do ANYTHING to avoid more surgery just from the screwed up experiences before...
Whenever I think of what it would actually BE, I seriously almost have a panic attack. I have to consciously shut down and just NOT think about it anymore.
Even before and after pictures give me the fucking willies...I look pretty cut up already, but nothing compares to that uneven, winding river, hip-to-hip red slice people have after a tummy tuck :x I feel like I'd start shaking everytime I saw my belly in the mirror and run from the bathroom.
Money.
What the hell.
Ok, so, we have everything all worked out, right? All of our debt paid off, all of our tithing done or mapped out, 2nd car purchased, house due to close. We've got necessary renovations, furniture we're missing and a buffer for our first year living there budgeted in, along with a few other things.
I got a bill in the mail today.
For $190,000.
One hundred and ninety thousand dollars!!
It's from Brigham and Women's, for Elise's NICU stay.
How in the world is it even legitimate for me to be just getting this bill for the first time now, when she's about to turn a year old? She was discharged at 3 1/2 weeks, and during her stay we met with the social worker and care coordinator plenty about their hassles with getting Florida Medicaid to pay the bill...and I remember the relief, albeit through layers of mind-numbing stress, when it was all worked out and taken care of. One less thing to worry about, awesome. So why now are we getting this bill? They've had my contact information all along and I've been communicating with them often, it's definitely not as though they just found me. Aside from legal stuff we dealt with, I've talked with her nurses and the care coordinator plenty to update them on her progress, and this has never been mentioned. And I received and paid some of my own bills that Medicaid wouldn't cover, for pathology and things. MANY MONTHS AGO, like last summer.
They're trying to act really generous in the bill, saying that if I pay promptly, they'll take off 20%. Yeah, I don't have that much either. Not unless we back out of a legally binding contract with a bank, forfeit a $22k deposit and take the loss of the cost of inspectors and surveyors. Not to mention, NOT GETTING A HOUSE.
I'm calling them tomorrow and trying to see what I have to do to fight with Florida Medicaid and get them to pay this, from my end. I mean, come on, they were SO good to Elise, and I DO want them to get paid, I am forever grateful to that NICU on about a million levels, but damn. I'm already negotiating a $111,000 hospital bill down here for my ICU stay last fall. Which was THEIR FAULT. We got a big sum of money dropped on us, yeah, but it's seriously just enough to set us up to live on G's income with a budget, independantly, debt free, and having given 10% (which we both felt was really, really important, especially after all the help WE received from total strangers last year...). We aren't in the Riviera on our yacht or anything, we're buying some tote bags from etsy, and once it's gone it's gone - with some new little cushions like life insurance that we never had before. The first thing we had to do was write check after check to doctors and labs and ERs and neurology departments, for 3 days, when we got it. The "writing year" with Grant not working was a pipe dream when we sat down to figure it out, and I'm "settling" instead for flying down some friends of mine that I'm dying to see.
Anyway, yeah, sudden year old but presented as brand new $190k bill that I was told was taken care of by insurance = not ok.
Elise is wonderful. Some of her new tricks include saying a consistent two syllables that she clearly thinks means "pick me up", and getting up on the dining table and my desk whenever people forget to push in the chairs.
Last night I was sitting up on the couch, with Elise sitting in my lap asleep and Jake laying next to me asleep. I was dozing off and on and she squirmed her way onto him - they woke each other up, face to face. I was ready for sick-kid hysterics, but instead they freaking looked at each other and grinned, and then commenced to do things like stroke each others' cheeks and give sloppy kisses for about 5 minutes before Grant ran over with the video camera. They were sitting up at that point, her leaning back against him and his arms around her.
Saturday was not any kind of ok...G had to work 12 hours, I hadn't slept much and I had to watch Aaron crying and shaking with pain and fever :/ All while very ill myself. I was feeling like my arms weighed 100 pounds each, so imagine my..uh...we'll call it "lack of amusement" when I realized the solution to his dilemma was to drag the portable hammock he's in love with out to the super warm sunshine in the yard and let him lay in the fresh air.
Anyway, it worked O_o And since then "sick with help" has been a nice contrast to "sick here by myself", particularly when I'm napping or eating something G's cooked.
I was also rather validated when the huge pot of from-scratch chicken noodle soup I made for everyone was actually universally well-received. The last time we were sick and I spent hours making stock and chopping things, nobody ate it but Grant and I. Big improvement.
This "oral virus" is really weird, btw. I was drooling so much in my feverish sleep the first night that I kept waking up all wet. Not acceptable. Apparently (according to the pediatrician) my sister and Brian have such deep-rooted systemic yeast problems that their immune systems are shot, so basically anytime Brian gets sick, he mutates it into something way worse and then passes it along. Which is right in line with TWO incidences now where his little play group had a mild, 24 hour illness that landed Brian in the hospital and then got my family ultra sick for days. I think we are going to have to institute a week long quarantine on him from now on, from whenever he "seems better".
While we all wallow about with blankets and bottles of C-Boost and Gatorade, time is playing tricks on us...Grant and I's anniversary was yesterday. We had plans to make plans, but, well, yeah. I could barely lift my head for parts of it, so we're tentatively talking about using it as an excuse to celebrate belatedly...
And Elise will be 1 in 8 days.
And we'll be closing on a house "on or before" 14 days from now, assuming nothing drastic happens.
G and I kind of looked up suspiciously, earlier today, realizing all this in the midst of our haze.
My diastasis is HORRIBLE from 2 days not wearing my support thing (I just haven't had the energy to put it on, or the will to deal with wearing it) and the nonstop coughing. Everytime I cough, the whole big lump of drooping, hanging muscle (it's right above my belly button) enlarges drastically and jumps. It freaks Grant out big time to see. It HURTS, is my thing...and yesterday afternoon it woke me up hurting so intensely that I was really afraid, almost frantic - it was VERY intense pain. I felt around that area and actually pushed something back through, and then it went back to normal "Oh man this sucks" everytime I coughed. I mean that's what herniation IS is something (fat, organs, anything) coming through a muscular separation, and I've been warned that this thing is itching to herniate, but yeah. Alarming nonetheless.
G approached me today about going in for the whole reparative surgery. I look 6 months pregnant right now dressed, deformed naked, and hate my body desperately, but he is most concerned about having to rush me to the hospital again for some emergency procedure or other when I get something strangulated in there. After clamming up, getting nauseus and generally feeling like I would cry over the terror of more surgery, we agreed to talk more about it another time...I've sort of, semi-resigned myself to possibly going with some sort of "wear my thing as much as possible now, and have a consultation to see if it's actually really dangerous, and then plan to get this done when Elise is weaned and Ananda is over the trauma of me dissapearing to hospitals" plan...which would allow me to lose some weight, which would make the surgery less complex/dangerous and more aesthetically good.
Mostly I'm still shuddering. The last time I had surgery, I woke up in the ICU with a face full of tubes. The time before that, they left a sponge in me and it nearly killed me. And all that after I was willing to do ANYTHING to avoid more surgery just from the screwed up experiences before...
Whenever I think of what it would actually BE, I seriously almost have a panic attack. I have to consciously shut down and just NOT think about it anymore.
Even before and after pictures give me the fucking willies...I look pretty cut up already, but nothing compares to that uneven, winding river, hip-to-hip red slice people have after a tummy tuck :x I feel like I'd start shaking everytime I saw my belly in the mirror and run from the bathroom.
Money.
What the hell.
Ok, so, we have everything all worked out, right? All of our debt paid off, all of our tithing done or mapped out, 2nd car purchased, house due to close. We've got necessary renovations, furniture we're missing and a buffer for our first year living there budgeted in, along with a few other things.
I got a bill in the mail today.
For $190,000.
One hundred and ninety thousand dollars!!
It's from Brigham and Women's, for Elise's NICU stay.
How in the world is it even legitimate for me to be just getting this bill for the first time now, when she's about to turn a year old? She was discharged at 3 1/2 weeks, and during her stay we met with the social worker and care coordinator plenty about their hassles with getting Florida Medicaid to pay the bill...and I remember the relief, albeit through layers of mind-numbing stress, when it was all worked out and taken care of. One less thing to worry about, awesome. So why now are we getting this bill? They've had my contact information all along and I've been communicating with them often, it's definitely not as though they just found me. Aside from legal stuff we dealt with, I've talked with her nurses and the care coordinator plenty to update them on her progress, and this has never been mentioned. And I received and paid some of my own bills that Medicaid wouldn't cover, for pathology and things. MANY MONTHS AGO, like last summer.
They're trying to act really generous in the bill, saying that if I pay promptly, they'll take off 20%. Yeah, I don't have that much either. Not unless we back out of a legally binding contract with a bank, forfeit a $22k deposit and take the loss of the cost of inspectors and surveyors. Not to mention, NOT GETTING A HOUSE.
I'm calling them tomorrow and trying to see what I have to do to fight with Florida Medicaid and get them to pay this, from my end. I mean, come on, they were SO good to Elise, and I DO want them to get paid, I am forever grateful to that NICU on about a million levels, but damn. I'm already negotiating a $111,000 hospital bill down here for my ICU stay last fall. Which was THEIR FAULT. We got a big sum of money dropped on us, yeah, but it's seriously just enough to set us up to live on G's income with a budget, independantly, debt free, and having given 10% (which we both felt was really, really important, especially after all the help WE received from total strangers last year...). We aren't in the Riviera on our yacht or anything, we're buying some tote bags from etsy, and once it's gone it's gone - with some new little cushions like life insurance that we never had before. The first thing we had to do was write check after check to doctors and labs and ERs and neurology departments, for 3 days, when we got it. The "writing year" with Grant not working was a pipe dream when we sat down to figure it out, and I'm "settling" instead for flying down some friends of mine that I'm dying to see.
Anyway, yeah, sudden year old but presented as brand new $190k bill that I was told was taken care of by insurance = not ok.
Elise is wonderful. Some of her new tricks include saying a consistent two syllables that she clearly thinks means "pick me up", and getting up on the dining table and my desk whenever people forget to push in the chairs.
