benefit 4,928,761,350 of being unemployed & living with your folks

it's really handy when you do something tremendously stupid to not have to worry about mundane stuff. like work. or carrying your child around. or how to feed yourself when your room is on the first floor but the kitchen is on the the second.

thursday night i was cold. i've been cold at bedtime for the last week or so, primarily because our bed is located directly below the only window in our room. that means that even though the window is completely closed, when it's say 20 degrees outside (which it has been at night for the last week or so) that even if you have the heat on in the room, there's still a cold spot right where you put your head down when it's time for bed. i don't know about you, but if ANY part of me is too hot or too cold when it's time for bed? i can't sleep.

so i decided i was going to get the nice, fluffy, warm uw huskies blanket that i got for christmas two years back down from out of the closet to put over the comforter on the bed. vrock is a furnace so i'm not allowed to have an electric blanket on the bed. that means that if i'm cold, i have to pile blankets onto my side of the bed. fine. i can do that. i pulled the office chair over to the closet, braced it against the dresser, and climbed up. there was a little wobble, but no big deal. i've done this a million times. up, grab the item in question, and down with no problems. not so much this time.

when my parents built the garage (where the 5 of us are currently living) they put an apartment over the garage and a bedroom with a bathroom downstairs. they also made 9 foot ceilings, so you HAVE to climb onto something to get anything out of the closet downstairs. ideally that something would be, i don't know, a STEP LADDER, but i digress. the basket that the blanket was in is VERY light. 2 blankets, a pair of slippers, a pair of gloves, and i think a scarf is all that is in the basket. so i knew that it would be no biggie to grab the blanket.

EXCEPT.

i didn't know that vrock had also put an armband for his ipod in the basket. this wouldn't be a big deal except that he just kind of tossed it into the basket, meaning that it landed on top of the blanket. again, not really a big deal. except. when i pulled the basket down towards me to grab the blanket out, the ipod thing fell out. and startled the shit out of me. which caused me to lose my balance and fall.

luckily i didn't bang my head on the crib or the bookshelf that is right next to it. unluckily, i heard a distinct SNAP as i landed on my foot. i was sure that once we went to the er and got x-rays that there would be a break somewhere. luckily i was wrong and it's just very badly sprained. but man. it HURTS! i spent all of friday, saturday, and most of sunday in bed with my foot propped up and icing it off and on. and today it's STILL all kinds of lovely shades of purple and yellow.

the er doc didn't give me enough pain meds to last me to my follow up tomorrow with my regular doc, so i'm raiding dad's pain meds from his surgery last month. (only after checking with the pharmacist that they're safe to take while breastfeeding.) they make me sleepy though, which is great for at night but not so much for during the day. today i finally ventured upstairs, but had to have my mom bring the baby up since i don't trust my balance enough to carry him yet.

what a great way to spend a weekend, huh? on the plus side......it's not broken. and? vrock has been pretty awesome through the whole ordeal. after 4 days of being an invalid though, i'm ready for it to heal and to be able to walk on it without pain. we'll see what the doc says tomorrow about the timeline for that.

i know this though........i'll never use a chair to get something out of the closet again!

we have reached week 36

and i am SO FLIPPING READY for this little boy to be born.

the hip pain is gone, but now it's settled into the the center of my hips (as opposed to being just in one hip or the other like it was before.) so that means everytime i roll over in bed, i hurt. lovely. i'd still rather that than the pain with every other step that i was dealing with.

i've started on the weekly doc visits. last week i was VERY excited that i'd only gained 1 pound from the previous visit, 3 weeks earlier. woot! that was good. i go back tomorrow so we'll see how well i did this week. the doc told me last time that everything looked great and on track. i see my regular doc this week & next and if nothing has happened by next week, we'll schedule the induction for the due date. (i see his partners the last few visits, so i want to make sure it gets scheduled, just in case.)

tomorrow is also my mom's birthday. she's going with me to the appointment and the plan is to go to lunch after and then to see harry potter. (vrock has no desire to see it, and mom reads the books, so it works out.) depending on how crowded the theater is will make the decision if we actually see the movie or not. if not? i'll be back up there next week for another appointment and will go see it then.

i'm almost done with the twilight series, with only about 250-300 pages left in breaking dawn. still can't really understand what all the fanatacism is about with that series. it's no harry potter, that's for sure. it's been an enjoyable read, but i'll be selling the books to the used book store when i'm done. no need to re-read them.

got some bad news today, but i'm not really ready to share, as it's not my news to share. i would really appreciate some extra prayers though. any good thoughts would be great.

i'm going to try to keep updated on this the next month or so, but i can't promise anything. i'm in countdown mode. 28 days to go, should he be stubborn like his parents and not come until his due date. that will be my luck. LOL although, with only 3 chapter submissions and the final left to take for class, that could be a good thing. at least then i'd HOPEFULLY be done with class and wouldn't have to worry about having to still take the final!

i have no words

ok, that's so not true.

i have MANY words. most of them heated/angry/incredulous, in fact.

i read a story this morning about the "octuplet mom" in california. you know the one. the one who already had SIX (count them, SIX) children UNDER THE AGE OF SEVEN when she got pregnant. the one who is an unmarried, "full time student" that expects (at least from what i've read) her parents to shoulder the burden. the one who DESPITE the 6 kids, unmarried status, non job working PROCEEDED to not only use fertility drugs (yes, i'm assuming that fertility drugs were used because 8 babies does not happen naturally unless you're a cat!), but chose not to selectively reduce when it was discovered that there were SEVEN fetuses. (the 8th wasn't found until she was in the delivery room.) and the one who EXPECTS someone to PAY her TWO MILLION dollars to share her "story" and "parenting expertise".

these are the first words i had when reading that little tidbit:

WHAT

THE

FUCK??

now, i'm all for people having babies. i completely understand the draw & desire to have children. and i understand that for some, fertility drugs are the ONLY way that the dream of children can become a reality.

BUT.

for a woman who ALREADY has six kids? fertility drugs/egg stimulation/etc should NOT have been an option. AT ALL. i could ALMOST understand it if she had ONE prior child, maybe two and had turned to fertility treatments to conceive THOSE kids due to problems in previous pregnancies. (a la John & Kate Gosselin who'd had twins, wanted one more & ended up with 6 more.) not only do i believe that the doctors who assisted her in this folly should come up before some type of review board, i think that the state/federal governments should REFUSE to assist this woman with any type of money. (i know that sounds harsh, as the babies themselves did NOTHING wrong and shouldn't be punished for the stupidity of their mother. but still.)

i'm just floored at the things that continue to come out about this story. such as the woman's parents have hinted that their daughter may have some sort of mental illness. um, HELLO?!?!?!? did NO ONE think that after 6 kids MAYBE she should have been "fixed"??

nothing about this "spectacle" is easy or in black & white. there are 14 fatherless kids to think about. 8 of whom are still in the hospital fighting to get off of machines. the children are not at fault. i have MANY ideas as to what should happen to the mother in all of this. none of those ideas have a good outcome for the children however. it just makes me immensely sad that in today's world where there are so many people who struggle to have one baby, there are women like this that feel no compunction at all to have children that they are ill prepared to care for.

and the worse part? it's sounding more & more like this woman PURPOSEFULLY got pregnant with these babies to capitalize on the publics fascination with multiples. unless i'm TOTALLY misreading the stories, she PLANNED to sell her story and wanted to try to get a reality show/sponsors/etc.

i understand wanting the american dream. but at the expense of your own children? shame on you lady.

edited to add photo:meet the jumping bean

we haven't come up with a nickname for the baby yet, so jumping bean will work for now.

especially after today's performance!

we went in for the genetic testing this morning complete with ultrasound. we got to hear the heartbeat (154 bpm) and of course see the bean on the screen. and let me tell you, that little one did NOT want to stay in one position long enough for the sonographer to get her measurements! (hence the nickname jumping bean. although, to be fair, this baby is 1/4 mexican/latino/whatever you want to call it, courtesy of vrock. LOL)

according to the genetic counselor, everything looks good. we'll get the final blood results sometime in the next 7-10 days. i have another appointment on monday with my regular ob. all in all a good visit. the bean was VERY active during the scan (vrock kept saying he/she is camera shy what with all the movement!)

the biggest surprise? the bean is measuring 13 weeks 3 days. according to the in room scan my doctor did on 1/12, i should only be 12 weeks 4 days as of today. (although from my lmp, i was dating at 12 weeks 6 days) so i guess we'll have to see. since the difference was less than 5 days, the sonographer said that they wouldn't change my due date so we're still looking at 8/11.

if i can remember to do it, i'll add the "photo" tonight when i get home. provided i can get my scanner/printer to cooperate. moving is such fun. (LMAO i just typed "moving is suck fun" before correction. i think that's MUCH more accurate!)

and we have relapse

vrock has a post op infection.

FUCK!

the last 14 months have been a trying time for us. some very good things have happened and some very bad things have happened.

good:

• we had our first anniversary and went to vegas
• we returned to vegas and got married
• we got our first apartment together
• we celebrated 6 months of wedded bliss yesterday
• i got a job in my industry again after almost a year out of it

bad:

• i got laid off
• i couldn't find a job in my industry, so i applied for & got a job as a 911 operator
• between moving, getting married & starting a new job i was sufficiently stressed to the point of being sick for 4 weeks.
• i ended up quitting the 911 gig because of the stress/illness
• within 3 weeks of getting married & returning home, we both lost our jobs (his permanent, mine temp)
• he's had a hell of a time finding a job that pays decent money
• he had sinus surgery & a wrist injury

he was to have started his new contract gig this morning. "was to" being the operative words there. due to his infection, the fact that he can't see the doc until tomorrow & the fact that since he can barely breathe he didn't get more than 30 minutes of sleep last night, he didn't.

luckily for us, the company he'll be contracting for is AWESOME and when he called his liasion this morning, he was told to go to his appointment tomorrow and come in on wednesday to start instead. THANK GOD! i was REALLY freaking this morning (and maybe not overly the caring wife i normally am) because we really need that money that he'll be bringing in & i was afraid that they'd just replace him for not coming in today.

can you say WHEW?!?!

how do you spell relief?

i spell it:

i-n-s-u-r-a-n-c-e

we had yet ANOTHER snafu with insurance coverage on wednesday after vrock's surgery.

quick back story:

when vrock went in for his doctors visit on 9/30 he was given an Rx for antibiotics. when he got to the pharmacy they told him that we didn't have coverage. excuse the hell out of me?!?!? after MULTIPLE phone calls, i got it fixed and i picked up his prescription the next day. (the pharmacy didn't have what he needed but it was coming in the next day's shipment.)

fast forward to wednesday. after being at the hospital from 8:30am to 2pm, we were both ready to go home. we made 3 stops: one at the pharmacy across the street for a specific nasal wash not carried at our normal pharmacy, one at my parents to drop something off and the third at our local pharmacy to pick up all of our prescriptions. he's still kind of loopy from the anesthesia so he stayed in the car. 40 (count them!) minutes and $85 later i FINALLY came out with our prescriptions.

seems that SOMEHOW there was an error in reporting and we were shown as having our coverage EXPIRE on 10/11. EXCUSE me? needless to say i was PISSED off. after multiple phone calls (pharmacy called, i called) to multiple places (prescription coverage, hr, etc.) i decided to just pay the $85 (no insurance rate) and take my man home to rest. i was PISSED though and made a few MORE calls yesterday when i got back to work. nobody can give me a satisfactory answer as to WHAT the hell happened, but it appears to be fixed for the moment.

all i know is that i better NOT have to go through this every 2 weeks. see, my hr updates the insurance company who in turn updates the prescription people every 2 weeks. and if i have to do this every time we need a damn prescription, heads are going to roll. that is just BAD customer service right there.

since it was finally fixed and it had been less than 7 days since the pharmacy had run the prescriptions through the system, i called and had them rerun them so i could get credited the difference. which means that we get almost $40 back after all is said and done.

too bad i have to do some grocery shopping this weekend. i'd much rather use that $40 to soothe my stress with either thai or chinese for dinner.

aftermath

vrock's surgery went very well yesterday. so well, in fact, that he's not even taking his pain medication. his only complaint (other than a faint headache), so far, is that the rinsing agent he has to squirt up his nose forever (ok, only 4 times a day for 3 weeks!) kinda burns his nasal passages. so far, no black eyes.

update

i'm in a better place this week than i was last week at this time. which is good.

here's what's on tap for this week:

• vrock is having his surgery tomorrow. while he's doing that, i'll be having my own doctor's appointment. might as well kill two birds with one stone.
• tomorrow, i'll be nurse/taxi driver/wife to vrock's patient/husband/crankypants
• i'll try to catch up on tivoed shows tomorrow while he's resting
• work

that's about it. i've been reading up on the recovery and it doesn't sound like fun AT ALL. i hope that the surgery goes well and that it takes care of all of vrock's sinus issues.

keep your fingers crossed, k? thanks!

i feel 300 pounds lighter

ok, maybe not 300 pounds lighter. but definitely lighter.


yesterday i started to write a post about how frustrated i was with the people at the doctor's office. the doctor that is doing vrock's surgery next week. i was so angry i was on the verge of tears all afternoon.


our insurance kicked in on 9/1 and knowing that, we didn't go to the doctor until after that. we have a $3000 deductible and a health reimbursement account of $750 from my work. basically that means the hra pays the first $750 and we pay the remainder. after that everything is covered at 80%. because our insurance didn't start until 9/1 though, both amounts were prorated for the rest of the year. (at $1000 and $250) vrock had to have a ct before we could officially determine he needed surgery. then he had to go see the surgeon so he could look at the scan. neither item has been billed to our insurance yet.

that being said, when the surgeon's office called the insurance they were told that we have a $1000 deductible and a $250 hra account. so what does the surgeon's office do? they called vrock yesterday and basically said "you need to bring in your deductible amount before surgery so that you can have your surgery." excuse the fuck out of me! so he called me and told me and i went ballistic. i called the office and our exchange went a little something like this:

me: this is vrock's wife. i understand that you called my husband & told him that we had to bring $1000 in to your office before he could have surgery.

snotty bitch at surgeon's: that's not exactly what i said. i called your insurance company and they stated that your deductible has not been met. with a high deductible, the doctor requires that it be met prior to surgery.

me: wtf?!?!? look. yes, we have a deductible of $1000. we also have a hra which is $250 so that our portion is only $750. on top of that, vrock has had a ct scan on 9/15 AND been to see you last week on 9/30. NEITHER of those have been billed to my insurance yet, but i KNOW they will run close to the $750 that we are responsible for.

sb: oh. well, let me look and see what the allowable amounts are for those and i'll call you back tomorrow to let you know what i find out.

that was the MUCH abriged version of that conversation. i've never heard of a doctor's office requiring your deductible to be met before they'll perform surgery. that's just ridiculous. i called my insurance company and they verified that it does happen, although they ask the doctors to not do that. it's all turned out fine (we don't have to pay anything up front) but i was SO upset yesterday that i gave myself a headache.

it's funny to write this now after all the angst of yesterday. it's almost anticlimactic in a way. (that's probably because i'm not feeling homicidal at all anymore.) i did talk to the office this morning and they pulled their heads out of their asses and figured out what the allowable billing amounts were for the 2 visits he's already had and how much of that would translate to our deductible. when they did that our responsibilty comes to $330 which, since it falls UNDER the $500 mark, they don't collect up front.

and the verdict is in

and that verdict is:

SURGERY

ugh. even though we were 99% sure that was what the doctor was going to say, it's never what you want to hear.

so it's scheduled for the 15th. which means that i get a day off in the middle of the week (yay!) but it also means that my husband is going under general anesthesia for the surgery (boo!).

keep your fingers crossed that all goes well and that this will resolve his sinus problems.

at last!

vrock has had a chronic sinus infection since thanksgiving last year. every time he gets on antibiotics it goes away. until, of course, he stops taking them. then it's back. it's not completely awful every day as far as the symptoms go. some days he feels just fine. then there are the other days.

the other days usually start out with him feeling fine. then he gets the sniffles. no matter how often he blows his nose, it still feels like a "worm" is in his nasal cavity. (from what he tells me anyway.) sometimes it progresses to the point where it makes him sick to his stomach and he becomes physically ill. sometimes it makes him unable to eat. it ALWAYS puts him in a bad mood. i understand this, truly i do. but thankfully i won't have to deal with it too much longer.

he has an appointment on tuesday with the specialist to determine once and for all if he needs to have surgery, or as i like to call it "roto-rooter of the nose". we are both anticipating that he will indeed need surgery. he had his ct scan last week and his primary doctor referred him back to the specialist. (we saw the specialist over the summer at a cost of $400 to us. he told us that without the scan he couldn't really tell us if surgery was the way to go. DUH! but we had to wait until the new insurance from my job kicked in before he could go get the scan done.) so, it's looking like there is at least 1 day in my future where i get to play taxi & nurse to vrock, if only for the day of surgery.

in related news, while i'm thankful that i work for a large corporation that treats is employees very well, i've been VERY frustrated at the incompetence of a member of the hr team. see, i've worked for this company before. so i knew when i started exactly when my insurance would kick in. (9/1) knowing this, and knowing which plan i wanted to sign up for, i immediately filled out my medical benefits so that i wouldn't have to remember to do it before such and such a date. so i signed up in the MIDDLE OF JULY for my benefits. you can then understand why i was surprised that when i called the insurance carrier last week to get our member id numbers (something the specialist's office said they HAD TO HAVE in order to schedule vrock's appointment) that they had NO RECORD of the new plan. excuse me? so i called the hr deparment and they ASSURED me that the information would be going to the insurance company the next day and that the insurance company would then have the info in their system between 3-5 business days later. (this was on the 15th.) fine.

i started calling on the 18th to get the info i needed because the specialist actually had an opening on the 30th. i called EVERY day to check in to see if we'd been uploaded into the system. finally after yesterday's "i'm sorry but i only see the information from the last time you had a plan with us" i was pissed off. i asked them why it was taking so long to get this into the system? i had been told that the information had been sent LAST WEEK! basically i asked her "wtf?" she said that if the info had been sent, it would be in the system by now. you see where i'm going with this? i then called hr and the gal there was very helpful but what she told me was anything but. i'm sure you've guessed by now that the person i talked to last week? the one who ASSURED me that my info was being sent on the 16th? DIDN'T SEND IT! so we effectively lost a week's worth of time where vrock could have had his appointment made. i was, understandably, less than pleased. (and if you saw my facebook status, you saw how displeased i was.)

the new gal assured me that the info would get sent over yesterday and that she'd have her manager call me to let me know when it had been sent. i get the call that it's been sent and wait a bit to call the insurance company. by the time i call them, they have the info i need and i'm able to relate it to vrock. finally! someone who DOES WHAT THEY SAY! brilliant!

so i'm getting ready to leave for the day and i call vrock on my way up to the bus stop. i ask him if he was able to get his appointment set and am prepared to hear that now he has to wait until mid october or something to get his appointment. (this specialist has 2 offices and is not always in the one closest to us.) his response?

"yeah. they had ALREADY scheduled me for an appointment on the 30th at 1:15."

so, yeah. i went through all of that for NOTHING. they'd scheduled him even though they SPECIFICALLY told him that they would NOT schedule without the insurance information.

bastards.