Oh Health Me

Help me with Health.

I waited to schedule my kids' well examinations because I wanted to change our health insurance to an Oregon plan. After all, the last time I took one of them in (when we lived in Oregon back in Jan-Mar), the visit (which involved looking at my son for 10 seconds and never touching him, all done by the nurse practitioner "oh he has a rash? It's no big deal. It's just __") cost us over $200. And, since we just don't live in CA anymore, we obviously need to switch.

Well, the underwriting for this new health plan has taken over 2 months. It's ridiculous. We ALMOST have it... just waiting on one more medical record. Never get sick if you plan on changing insurance, it is such a headache to get on a different plan. I mean, insurances don't want to offer health insurance to anyone but the SUPER healthy. Anyway, with all this attention to swine flu, and knowing tons of people living around us who already have had it, and with stories of hospitalizations, I figured I better get the kids vaccinated. After all, if they get sick enough with the flu to go to the doctor, that one visit could cost us over $200. (We pay everything to a very high deductible, except for their yearly exams and shots). Not worth it, if we can prevent it, right? It seems like a common thing to go in to see your doctor when you are sick with the flu. And I have heard plenty of stories of kids being dehydrated and needed to go to the hospital to rehydrate with IV fluids. Can't imagine how much THAT would cost...

Well, I have called 2 doctors offices (that have several doctors). Pediatricians, family practices, etc. No one is accepting new patients. I called another and they said maybe, they will get back to me. Okay, any day now. AND they are out of swine flu vacc AND seasonal flu vacc. I called the local pharmacies. They don't offer them to kids. I called the county. They won't give kids under 3 the swine flu vacc (which rules out my son) and won't give kids over 3 the seasonal vacc (which rules out my daughter). So they can each have one of each vaccine. So I was running out of options... no place to get my kids their flu vaccines, their immunizations. CAN'T let them get sick. I finally just hung a bottle of hand sanitizer on my belt loop and went crazy with it when we dropped Aaron at the mall today (the kids wanted to play on the germ happy indoor play structures). I'm not always a germ-a-phobe. Mostly when I know there's flu going around, schools are closing because of it, and we can't afford to get sick with more than a cold.

So finally, I just called my kids' primary care pediatrician back in CA. They set up me with an appointment to see them, nice and easy. They have both vaccines available. So the kids get to see the doctor and have lots of shots (due for immunizations too) when we come home for the holidays.