Rotten things

We’ve had a great summer, but there have definitely been some difficult moments:

This is what happened while we were at church. Nothing was taken, there wasn’t anything in there to take.

We’ve had a summer full of car burglaries:

*In May, Bill’s car got broken into while it was parked in the parking garage at his office (which is just around the corner from our house). They got lots of equipment and tools. Then they came back and broke into it again (same car, same place). The second time, nothing was in the car – we hadn’t even finished fixing the damage they did the first time and we certainly hadn’t replaced anything (like the radio). Very frustrating!

*In July, my purse was stolen out of my car. Also at Bill’s office. The door was actually unlocked, I parked right in front of the office and just ran in to drop something off. Miraculously, though, I got almost everything back – even the purse. Three different people, in three different parts of the valley found personal items strewn on the street and called either me or the police and I got them back. Of course, the thieves racked up some big charges, but I reported it pretty quickly and the bank/credit card companies were really good to work with. I almost feel bad for them—several of the charges were to collection agencies.

Then, of course there was the broken window (above) on September 1. And, not burglary-related, but definitely car-related, we were just leaving on our trip to Canada when one of our van’s tires had a blowout. Although, I really have to count my blessings with that one: (a) Bill was driving, (b) it happened in SLC BEFORE we left, (c) not only were we in SLC, we were a mile from my in-laws house so Bill & Doug had the tire off in no time, and (d) we found a place that could put on new tires that night so we could still leave for our trip the next morning.

 

Then, we had an August of medical problems…

*Sandy & Abby got sick. Abby was better in 24 hours, Sandy was so sick that I took her to the doctor – she couldn’t even keep sips of water down – and they gave her Zofran to stop her throwing up. But after almost a week of being sick, she was so lethargic she would hardly even move so we took her to instacare. Of course, the instacare doctor was young and handsome and my lethargic little girl perked right up and started flirting with him. So I don’t think he believed it was as bad as it was. She started to improve after a couple of days, but it was another week before she was really eating and drinking normally.

*A couple of weeks later, Sandy woke up screaming and writhing in pain on a Friday night. I got up with her and after about an hour – warm bath, rocking her, rubbing her back – was able to get her settled back down. She was fine the next morning, but then Saturday night she woke up screaming and writhing in pain again. This time I wasn’t able to settle her down. So, Sunday morning I took her to instacare. Their diagnosis was bad gas. Apparently there was some sort of a bug going around that caused that because about a week later, Abby woke up with the same thing. Of course, by then I knew to give her chewable Gas-x.

*Sandy complains a lot about her stomach aching, and so we took her to see a pediatric gastroenterologist. He ran tons of blood tests – all came back normal – and had me chart everything for a month… I charted how her stomach felt on a scale of 1 to 10 three times a day, every bowel movement, etc. She definitely has a sensitive stomach – she has a strong gag reflex and once she starts throwing up, her stomach has a hard time stopping. She also gets motion sickness. Anxiety seems to trigger stomach aches. She had a stomach ache before school started until I took her to the store to pick out a treat to give her teacher on the first day. Then the stomach ache disappeared. So, I think we’ll just keep an eye on things – there’s a lot I can do to prevent problems: addressing her anxiety, not forcing her to eat things she doesn’t want to, chewable Dramamine for motion sickness….

*The blood tests that Sandy had done were sent to the wrong lab for testing. Despite my specifically checking where they were sending them. And our insurance didn’t cover the lab they were sent to.

*Bill has had heartburn for a long time and I have been trying to get him to see someone about it for most of our marriage. He finally went to a gastroenterologist who wanted to scope his stomach. Bill has a hiatal hernia and his esophagus was so burned that the doctor couldn’t see if there were any other problems underneath. So, he gave Bill a really strong dose of medication and wants to repeat the scope in 2 months.

And that would be how we spent $1500 in unexpected medical expenses in one month. And that is with insurance. Yikes!