Health Insurance--How I Love and Need Thee!!

In the last 24 hours 3 different members of our family have seen 3 different doctors for 3 different things--OUCH!! I am so glad for health insurance and that our Flex Spending Account reset the beginning of January. That is crazy since we are not even two weeks into 2010 and we are already about $200 into our Flex Spending account. Enough complaining let me explain what has happened in the last 24 hours.

Matthew had an appointment with his child psychiatrist who works a lot with kids with autism. He has been going to see her for about 5 years so she knows him and us pretty well. It was divine intervention that we even ended up seeing her in the first place, but that's another story for another time. The reason he needed to be seen was it was time for some medication management. Matthew seems to have a cyclical nature to his behavior. Between him growing so fast and just the nature of the different medications, he needs his medications readjusted every so often which for some reason usually happens around the beginning of the year. We had hit a hard patch for awhile, but before doing anything drastic we try to ride it out. Like with every kid, everyone goes through a hard time once in a while. This hard time lasted a couple months which showed me it was time to make the appointment. Now I am not a person who is pro-medicate your child and it took a lot of soul searching before we decided to start Matthew on medication in the first place. Before we started the medication we had to think long and hard and finally came to the conclusion that he was not happy functioning the way he was and we felt like we weren't letting him function to his full ability, either. Once we started some medications and got him on something that worked where he could learn and participate in school as well as at home we could finally see what he was missing out on. Since then every so often because he is a fast growing kid things need to get tweaked and it is not always easy to figure things out. Each autistic child is so different and their needs are so different that unfortunately, some of it is just by trial and error. Good thing most of the few different things we have tried have been successful. As for now it is another trial and error type of thing. Hopefully we can get him to a point where he can be happy and be able to function while learning in school again. It is hard to see him struggle as with any other child--maybe more with him because I am looking at the long range picture and it is going to be hard, long road, but if anyone can do it he can. So far so good and I am hoping it stays that way.

Anyway, as for Daniel, yesterday he never acted like he was sick in the least. He was up running around like usual just maybe a little extra whiny, but that's not all that unusual for him. He went and sat by Aaron in the afternoon and Aaron felt him and told me he felt warm. I went and got a thermometer and checked it and sure enough he had a temperature of 103 degrees. I medicated him with some ibuprofen and went on about the rest of the night. I thought it was strange because he had no other symptoms whatsoever. I went to the gym and by the time I got back about 10 pm I checked on him and he was burning up. I took his temperature and it was up to 104.3 and that was with two different thermometers giving me that reading. I made an appointment with my not so favorite 24 hour pediatrician's office and took him in. By the time we got to the office and they took his reading it was up to 105. That scared me quite a bit since Josh's first seizure was supposedly a febrile seizure. Anyway, Daniel still was not acting sick at all which was strange. He was talking with the medical assistant and PA like it was no big deal being at the doctor's office about midnight with a 105 degree fever. They did a strep test which came back negative, but when they looked in his mouth his tonsils were HUGE, spotted and looked pretty red and angry. Why Daniel wasn't complaining I don't know because I know I would have been complaining had it been me. We finally got the antibiotic prescription and came home about 1 am. I medicated Daniel with Tylenol and ibuprofen and sat with him until his fever broke and then went to bed. I finally was able to make it to the pharmacy this morning for his antibiotic so hopefully he will be feeling better soon even though he didn't really ever feel "sick".

This morning Aaron was nice enough to stay home from work with Daniel and Sarah while I went to my scheduled OB appointment. Everything with me and the baby are going great. It is still a boy and I even got to see a 4D ultrasound of him. He must have been shy because he refused to move his arms away from his face so I only got to see his nose and mouth with two hands covering the rest. I am starting to realize how soon he will be here and I am starting to get excited to see him even though I still feel really overwhelmed at the thought of having another baby. My next appointment is the big ultrasound where they look at everything to make sure it all looks normal and healthy and it is also my glucose screening. It is the only time where it is actually doctor's orders to eat a candy bar and drink a regular soda (not diet) for breakfast. AWESOME!!

Anyway that is why I am thankful for health insurance and Flex Spending Accounts since we had three different doctor's visits within 24 hours. Hopefully we can get everyone happy, healthy and fully functioning for the upcoming long holiday weekend...What a way to start off the week or the year for that matter...