De-nied

I am so backed up on blogging. Wow. One day you'll check up and there will be multiple entries. That means I couldn't sleep.

For now, I can't avoid sharing our story from last night. Anytime I get ticked off I feel the strong urge to share it with the world. So here you go. I have to warn you I must backtrack a bit though ...

Friday I took Chelsea to her babysitters house so I could go to my staff meeting. An hour after dropping her off the sitter called and said she was crying and following her around the house. She said when her husband tried to go to work, Chelsea started sobbing, reaching for him and saying DADDY. He came back in and held her for a bit before leaving. The sitter thought it might help for Chelsea to talk to me so she put her on the phone.

Chelsea? It's mommy.

Mommeeee??? (full blown bawling).

Don't cry baby. Mommy's coming.

Yeah, I'm a sucker. I tried to just help warm her up so I could leave, but she wasn't having it. It was not a good day for any of my backups either, so Chelsea got to attend her first staff meeting. I'm pretty sure none of the other teachers there minded a bit! She tends to be pretty charming.

Fast forward to Sunday. She wakes up coughing. She did pretty well during the day, then started coughing again at night. It was barky, a classic croup. We've done this multiple times before (usually with Logan), so no panicking yet.

Monday evening Grandma comes over, immediately notices Chelsea's warm (bad mama!) Seriously I felt bad I didn't notice. I didn't think she felt too warm, so I went ahead and ran our errands before checking her temp. By 7pm when we got home she felt warmer and was acting sick. She wasn't playful, wasn't talking, and was just downright grumpy. Sure enough, she was up to 101.7.

At this point you know what I'm thinking right? Swine flu. Seriously I panic a little too much. I called the school nurse (can you believe they publish the staff phone numbers in the school directory. Crazy. I still can't get over that.) Anyways I called and bugged the school nurse and she assured me they haven't had any H1N1, or even any fevers at the school lately. Whew. We're back to classic croup. My next call was to our ped.'s office to see if they wanted me to see have her checked for the flu, or seen for any reason. She did say that it might be worthwhile to take her to a prompt care so we didn't end up in the ER where it was super germy later on that night. I thought that was definitely not a bad idea.

I quickly called every prompt care in town until I found ONE that took Chelsea's insurance. You see because she has a disability she has a medical card, and not everyone accepts her medical card. Health care. I won't even start. So I head across town, literally. Once I get to the other side of town, I'm taken on a 5 mile detour. Did I mention I'm fighting the clock? Making every effort to arrive before they close at 8pm. In the end I was successful, I arrived about 5 minutes before close.

They asked what we were there for and I told them. Because I have a big mouth, I did say that I didn't think she was extremely sick, but I wanted someone to peek at her so I didn't end up in the ER. I mentioned that she would catch more bugs there than here, and since she has AML in remission I wasn't comfortable with that.

Honk. Beep. Buzz. (Imagine RED lights flashing everywhere).

That was the wrong thing to say.

We can't see her here.

Ummm, yes you can. Her leukemia is in remission, she hasn't had treatment for almost a year.

Well still, we can't see her. Did you call her oncologist?

Her what? They have real cancer patients they are taking care of. They don't really want to know every time my daughter has a fever.

Well I know our doctors won't see her.

For crying out loud, let me talk to them.

The doctor is on the other side of the room and the nurse whispers our situation to him. He asks me who told us to come here. I told him her pediatrician did. Then he says, "did they tell you what our operating hours are?"

Hmmm, so is this a case of ....

You don't want to see my daughter because she had leukemia A YEAR AGO ...

or you're sick and tired of seeing patients and you just want to go home?

I'm pretty sure it was the latter. I made one of those instant mommy decisions and decided these didn't seem like people I really wanted laying hands on my kid anyways.

Forget it. We're going home.

Well, m'am. We've noted that our medical advice was for you to go to the ER.

My kid has a fever and a cough. I'm not going to the ER.

Call me bitter, whatever. I thought that was completely ridiculous. For crying out loud, how long after chemo do they expect us to harass our oncologist? I'm pretty sure they will get a kick out of it.

And by the way, we went to the ped. today. She's got a sore throat, a cough and a fever still. No flu. No strep. Just a virus.