The princess is still a walking cesspool of illness. Last night, she rallied and I believed that she would be ok. Then in the middle of the night, she was up sick. Now is the time I count my blessings. There have been many times when the husband has been gone on a work trip and the children have passed around a tummy bug, or a fever, or cold virus. But the joy of my life as a mother, at times like these, is that I do not have three children under the age of 5 passing illness to one another anymore. Everyone knows how to be sick without making a huge mess anymore. Those days when the icky laundry would pile up and I would follow the kids around with towels and buckets are past. Now, some cleaning, plus a lot of Lysol, and we can usually keep a virus to a minimum.
My plan today is to venture out to the store. My husband does all of these errands for me, especially since I've been hurt. I've been trying to visualize my best plan of attack. In this, I realize that I must take the oldest with me to the store. She won't be happy as we will have to buy those items that 12-year-old girls are so embarrassed to admit they need. This is not an adventure quest she wants to go on. I find it kind of funny...
But beyond our current week's issues, I have something that weighs on my mind. Its a middle-class, lack-of-information problem that I probably have thought in the past, too. I don't hear these ideas from people who are poor, who have been poor for a while, or who have risen out of poverty. I hear these things from people who are working middle class. Its the idea that there is someone else who will take care of this problem. In my case, its the problem of healthcare.
A person who was on medical leave recently returned to work at the poor school. She was aghast that I haven't had surgery for my torn meniscus. She wanted to know why I hadn't. Why hadn't I gotten medicaid? Why don't I have Obamacare (seriously people, its ACA, Affordable Care Act, regardless of what you think of it). Why hadn't I gone to the county? Why hasn't my church paid for it? Have I thought of looking into finding a church that would? Why haven't I gone ahead and gotten the care and then made payments? A lot of times, the hospital and doctors just write off these things. She couldn't believe that I would put up with this injury for so long! She had to think of some way to fix it.
And that is all good and well. If she has a better idea, that is honest, I would be willing to consider it. I don't qualify for medicaid. The county gives you a loan and they put a lien against your house (our house won't sell for a price high enough to cover knee surgery). I haven't thought about asking my church to pay for this... and I certainly won't be changing churches based on what they can give me. All doctor's offices require either insurance or payments at time of services, to take services without paying is stealing. Since I have friends who work in the medical field, I would no more take toilet paper from their children than to steal the services of a doctor. When the hospital agrees to write something off, you still have to pay taxes on that, and then you have a bigger problem than just being poor. You have the problem of a huge tax burden that you have no way to pay. So I'd rather endure this injury than to not have integrity.
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