The Week Murphy Moved In - Part 1

The day John left Aggreko our health insurance ended. Cobra is an option but a very expensive one ($1000 a month). We decided to see if we needed it. We could pay for the occasional office visit and should anything major happen we could sign up for Cobra. Plus no one has been really sick in a while. We should have realized that Murphy would have moved into our home the second the insurance ended.

So a week after John started his new job Karena got a stomach bug. That was the evening of Father's Day. Tuesday I started feeling bad - just felt like indigestion but than different too. By Tuesday night I was in so much pain. I was afraid it was my appendix or something. I called my dr. and he suggested it might be gallstones or my appendix. I took some Tylenol and Pepto and the pain eased off. I went to bed and slept fairly well. Wednesday morning I'm feeling better but as the morning goes on the pain is coming back worse and worse. I make an appt. with my dr. I get there and after examining me he determines its most likely my gall bladder. If its gall stones than I will need surgery to remove my gall bladder. But I need blood work and an ultrasound first. (Remember we don't have insurance.) I get my blood work done, pay for the visit and head over to the hospital for my ultrasound. I pay for that and then wait to have my ultrasound.

In the meantime my cell phone rings. Karena and Tyler are with a sitter (Hannah is up at Mom and Dad's). Karena has "scraped" her foot while riding her trike and is in hysterics. She wants me to "COME HOME!" I tell the sitter to get her some ice cream and whatever will help her calm down.

I have my ultrasound and since my dr. ask them to read it stat I wait for the results. My gall bladder looks fine. No surgery today. I rush back over to the dr. office. Its locked. I know there are still people in there because it only closed 10 minutes ago. I sneak in as someone is coming out. I ask to see the dr again. I'm sure he is so sick of me, but I don't care because I hurt too bad to care. He graciously sees me again and loads me up with samples (THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!) of pain medicine and stuff in case its not my gall bladder and is an ulcer instead. I take it all when I get home and by Thursday I'm fine.

But...back to Karena. I imagined a scrape. Every child has scraped something. No big deal. I check Karena's foot when I get home. Not a scrape. This is a 3 inch abrasion along the top of her foot. I guess she was wearing flip-flops and tried to use the top of her foot as a brake. My stomach actually flipped when I saw it. Two weeks later its actually healing quite nicely. But it involved a dr. visit and soaking it 2x a day in warm soapy water. Not a fun process for a 4 yr old girl. She even got to wear slippers and tennis shoes to church. New rule: No flip flops while riding trikes.

I'll finish the rest of the saga later.