Making the most of our insurance while we still have it

March second we find out if our insurance stops covering the hospitals in our area. Looking forward to that. In the meantime, unintentionally, I’ve been using the crap out of the plan this week. My cold? Now a sinus infection. I actually was able to sleep most of the hours I attempted to last night (I didn’t get all bent out of shape about the cheerful bird calls out my window at 7 AM for the first time in a week!) and now I have antibiotics so I’m hoping that, altogether, at the end of it, I will have felt like crap for a maximum of ten days. That’s really all a person should be asked to endure.

Also, first OB visit; nothing to report, ultrasound next week, doctor brought up having a VBAC all on her own, told me in her opinion there’s no known way to reduce the risk of preeclampsia once you’ve had it other than get pregnant by a different father. Now she tells me. I was also really entertained with her fast monologue at the end, “You can breast or bottlefeed your baby. We recommend up to a 25-pound weight gain. You need a rear-facing car seat. If it’s a boy, you can request a circumcision. Here are some pamphlets about prenatal testing; let us know next week. They’re optional. These are the types of fish you can eat. etc. etc.” That could be pretty overwhelming and confusing if I didn’t already have informed opinions on these things.

In the various doctors’ waiting rooms (GP, OB, GP again), I realized we have a real diversity of caregivers–except that they are all female. My GP is a black woman and her partner is an Asian woman. Little Girl’s pediatricians are two Indian women. My main OB is a Middle Eastern woman. My dentist is a white man, though, so he can go ahead and represent the traditional medical patriarchy.

As for Little Girl, she just developed some weird red bumps across her chest and shoulder. I noticed them this afternoon, but given the extremely lax parenting I have been doing (let’s just say there is a bunch of deodorant rubbed on my walls and all the dishtowels have disappeared and I know these things and I do not care) they may have appeared earlier without notice. They’re not bothering her, so I hate to make yet another doctor’s appointment, so I’m gonna wait and see. I tried to get the new doc checking me out for my sinus infection to look at them but she was all, “I don’t know her medical history.” Um, she has no medical history. She’s two. She has weird bumps. What are they, lady? I think she was just pissed because somehow the tip I got from a parenting magazine to entertain your kid at the doctor’s by letting them draw on the paper on the examining table went wildly awry and, well, I think they’re gonna need to get that thing refurbished. I imagine all my copays will cover it.