BUGGED

it's just been one of those days.
i think i'm just finding things to be irritated about now.

quirky pregnant moments:
are all of my brain cells gone?
the other day i went in to turn off the light in the bathroom and turned on the water instead. i actually walked out of the bathroom before i realized what i had done and went to correct my absent braindness.
tonight i am standing in my living room getting ready to settle in for some tv.my normal lamp is shining brightly in the corner but it still seems dim. i think to myself "it sure is dark in here. i better turn on another lamp." but rather than cross the room to the lamp that is off that i meant to turn on i cross the room to the lamp that is on and turn it OFF so that the room is completely dark.
gimme a break!


there are a couple of ppl whose blogs i keep up with. and comment on regularly. i never know if they check their comments b/c no one ever says anything about what i say! and i don't think they ever come here and read my blog b/c they never comment here either!i didn't know until i was informed by a fellow blogger that it was proper blog manners to comment on what your commenters had to say. and it's been great fun ever sense.
i started a blog to keep up with a friend. it worked out great for keeping up with them, i guess my life just isn't interesting enough for them to keep up with me. but i have great new blogging friends since i became a blogger anyway. and that is very nice!



dr.s and insurance..... again.

TJ had his one year check up monday last week. he got 2 shots he hasn't had before. the MMR(for measles mumps and rubella) and the chickenpox vaccine. plus a flu shot and another shot he's had a few boosters of already.
he rarely shows any side affects from the vaccines. other than a decreased appetite, some crankiness, and maybe some redness and swelling at the shot sight.
well, a week exactly after his shots both spots on his left leg flare up. i'm used to them flaring some. they'll pop up and look like mosquito bites. but are never bothersome. but this time it was a HUGE flare up. if i hadn't known better i'd have thought he had been burned with a curling iron. it was just that red. not swollen so much. you could feel bumps where each shot was given but you couldn't tell there was any swelling unless you touched it.
so i get out the list of vaccines/symptoms they sent me home with and guess what? redness and swelling aren't on the list for any of the shots. so is it just common sense that that could be a symptom of any shot? go figure.
so i keep an eye on it.
during the day yesterday it seemed not to change. but after bath time the area of redness had grown to be as long/wide as my thumb.
i decided to call in the am, just so they would know he had had a bad reaction and could chart it for future notice.
the nurse finally gets around to calling me back nearly 3 hrs later.
me: "where he got his shots has had some swelling and redness. i'm used to this looking more like a minor mosquito bite type reaction, but this looks more like a welt."

her: "well you should bring him in b/c the 2 new shots he got are actually live viruses that are injected in their system. if they have a reaction we need to know b/c we won't be able to vaccinate him anymore if he does indeed have the virus from the shot"

what?? isn't that why they give vaccines is so they don't get the disease or whatever?
i argued with her some. trying to tell her again that it's only where they shot was given in his leg and he didn't have any other symptoms.spotty rashes are common with both of the new vaccines. i was just concerned b/c it was such a bigger reaction at the shot sight than normal and wondered if that was due to what he was given.

her: " well you're telling me it's red and swollen and there's spots and the only way for us to know what's going on is for you to bring him in."

me: sigh "well then i guess we'll come in"

it was 10 35. it takes me a half an hr to get there and they asked me to arrive at 11 15. and i didn't care if i was late.
i got TJ up from his nap and changed his clothes and got us snacks and drinks for the road and off we went.

i got there at 11 15 exactly.

i waited until 11 50 before i was seen.(the new thing for dr's to do these days is block off appts for same day calls so don't tell me i was squeezed in b/c i was given an appt time to show up. they didn't just say "come on in and we'll get to you when we can" like back in the day.

i got the bitch nurse that i HATE! there's actually 2 nurses there i don't like and you never know which nurse you're gunna get and it drives me nuts!

she had me put TJ on the scale. i normally lay him down. when i tried to do this she grabs him and sits him back up which resulted in him leaning and reaching over for me to pick him up. i was standing right next to him so he wouldn't fall off the table and he just kept grabbing at me so i grabbed his upper arm to keep him still and from falling.

nurse: "you can't hold him, the scale picks up your weight."
(well what do you want me to do lady? he's just gunna fall off the damn table.)
after the 3rd attempt to get him to sit still she has me stand at the end of the table so he is reaching forward rather than to the side.
and fussed at me again for "holding him" when he reached far enough forward that he was almost on his knees.
these scales aren't the nice flat kind like what we get to stand on. they're like little tiny tippy metal baskets, so of course i'm going to grab when he moves!
we finally get him weighed (Which i still don't see what the big deal is b/c she didn't have me strip him naked so they weren't looking for an exact weight anyway.(which they did just get a week ago bay the way))

settled in the room she goes thru the routine questions:
her: "are all his immunizations up to date?"
i wanted to scream at her! if you had read his chart you would have seen that we were just here a week ago for that EXACT REASON!
but managed a restrained "yes. we were here last week for his 1 yr appt"

her: "is he on any medications?"

me: "no"

her: " Really? you don't give him any vitamins? motrin or tylenol?"

me: "oh well, he does get motrin for his teeth."
i didn't know they counted that as an actual medication. i was figuring more like antibiotics and stuff.
then she wanted to know when the last time he had any motrin was.
then we started talking about his leg. i told her my thoughts on it and she just stares at me! like i'm an idiot.
i even showed it to her.

me: " we came in b/c he never gets a reaction like this. he may get a red dot like a bite a couple days after the shot but it's been a week and i thought maybe it was the MMR vaccine that cause such a big irritated area."

her immediate response: "what makes you think it would be the MMR?"
and she didn't say it nicely. she just sounded snotty, like i didn't know what i was talking about.

at this point i'm frustrated.

me: "well it's the only shot he hasn't had before. well, he did get the chickenpox too, but the list ya'll gave me said symptoms for mmr show up 1-2 weeks after the shot is given and it's been a week so i figured the MMR made sense."

she looks right at me without batting an eye and says : " but he didn't get the MMR in that leg."

me: " whatever! i asked the nurse on the phone if they documented what legs got what shots and all's she said to me was that i needed to bring him in regardless of where the shot was given b/c they needed to know if it was a reaction to the virus or just an aggravated shot sight."
(common sense would tell me that he got both new shots in the same leg b/c he had such a bad reaction.what i think happened: he got the MMR and the pneumonia vaccine in the same leg, and the flu and the chicken pox in the other. either way he still got 2 new shots in 1 leg and thus resulted in a very inflamed shot sight.)

the nurse just stared at me for a minute. and then she left.
she just left!!!
a few minutes later the dr came in. examined the area and said it was normal!! i knew that it was mostly normal though it looked terrible! b/c he wasn't bothered at all by it. but it's always better to be safe than sorry. but your stupid nurse wanted me to come in. if it had been a reaction to the shot wouldn't he have shown the bigger symptoms like seizures and stiffness and fever and all that? rather than just an enflamed rather large area around the where the shot was given? i swear sometimes a mother is smarter than her dr!

then she tells me "don't be surprised if he breaks out in a rash from head to toe in another week."
great. thanks for the warning.
so remind me if i freak out next week about a rash.
and then she says he has to come back next month for a 2nd flu shot.
what? no one mentioned that last week.
"yeah this is the first year he gets the shot so he gets 2."
that makes no sense unless they can't give babies a full dose.
i kind of feel like they just had me come in today so they could squeeze more money out of my insurance co.

i called my insurance co. when i got home.
i had been thinking about getting TJ set up at my clinic b/c it's literally 5 minutes up the road.
it's just so much easier to run him up the street rather than spend 30 minutes to make what is less than a 10 mile trip to the dr if you could cut straight thru to the office, but know that it takes that long b/c you have to stop at a million red lights and there's always bad traffic and you have to hope on this hwy and then dodge over to that hwy and dodge the tolls in between.

the dr i wanted to get TJ in has reached her max for taking patients with our insurance. the one thing i hate about the military: the free medical is great! but hardly any one wants to take it, or much of it, b/c they never get all of their money.
so i picked a new dr at the same clinic.
the operator suggested i call the clinic to dbl check she was indeed taking new patients.
i did this. yes she's taking new patients. i set us one up for his 2nd flu shot in dec, as crazy as i think it is.
called insurance back. got a new operator. explained the problem to him. explained WHY i wanted to change dr's b/c it's such a big deal to my insurance co to change our PCP! and he says it's not a problem.
until he notices that said dr has "nearly reached her thresh hold for patients with this insurance." he tells me that billing and enrollment won't approve a transfer to her b/c she only has "11 slots open for patients and that's too close to her cut off."
does that make sense to you? if she has the room why can't i ask for a transfer to her?
i ask to submit the request anyway and he says "sure, but my personal recommendation is to find a new dr b/c billing and enrollment will reject this"

then he gives me some schpeel about upping my chances for approval on the new dr if i go and get a letter of acceptance from the dr, fill out the paper form for a PCP change and then take it all the way down into down town austin to the insurance office there so that my request is submitted before the holiday. if we waited til too close to thanksgiving it would be jan before i could see the new dr. which would have been fine b/c we'd be covered by the old dr in the meantime if something came up.
so i politely told him i'd see about doing all of that. hung up. gave it 3 hrs. called back when i was nice and calm and had decided it wouldn't be the end of the world if i had to keep going to the other place. got a new operator. walked him thru my conversation earlier that day with the first operator. left out what the 2nd crazy person wanted me to do. and asked simply to have my request verbally documented and processed.
he takes care of it all and ends the conversation with "once this is approved it should be effective dec 1. but they'll send you a letter out saying whether or not it was approved."

was that so hard??

i figure by the time the new baby is here we'll all have different dr's anyway. my dr's not taking more patients, and those other 10 slots for TJ's hopefully-new dr. will probably be all taken by the time new baby needs a dr. but so long as we can all go to the same clinic at least, i don't think it's that big of a deal.

and my head hurts.
it's that horrible pregnant lady head ache that is caused by the blood vessels expanding due to increased blood flow. my dr says caffeine should help b/c it makes the blood vessels constrict. it doesn't. my head just hurts. all the time. an aching dull pain.it goes away with tylenol but comes back unless i take tylenol all the time! and i don't want to do that b/c of new baby, even though i can take quite a bit. in the long run it is still better not to expose your still developing baby to stuff.

i guess getting off the computer might help this. i guess that's all the irrational bugginess i had to get out.