Do you know what a nephrologist is? Up until very recently, I didn’t really. It’s not the type of doctor you hear about very often.
Pediatrician?
Oncologist?
Orthopedist?
Podiatrist?
Cardiologist?
Sure. But a nephrologist?
It’s a kidney specialist. And I’ve won myself an appointment with one.
Despite hoping for the contrary, my 24-hour urinalysis showed that protein was still present. I guess the “normal” levels range from 0-30, and mine was 30.4. When the physician’s assistant told me this on the phone, all I could think was, “Are you kidding me?” I’m a measly 0.4–that’s ZERO.POINT.FOUR–outside of the normal range. So, if you ask me, I don’t think I have much to worry about. But given that it is over the normal limit, and that the whole point of this business it to be able to fight the life insurance company over my premium, my doctor decided to refer me to the specialist to get checked out.
Basically, her thinking is that if the nephrologist can examine me, run his tests, and deem me totally fine, he can write a letter to the insurance company certifying that I’m healthy. It’s our hope that, if the nephrologist can confirm that the protein means nothing in my case, the insurance company will agree to rate me like the normal, healthy 29-year-old that we believe I am. We’ll see.
At my age and with my health history, I certainly never thought that getting decent rates on life insurance would be this difficult. I’m still laughing about the fact that before my lab results came back, I was complaining about the standard rates. The sub-standard rates are much, much more worthy of complaining over.
In the meantime, we’re still working on shopping around with different life insurance companies. We had another one come over the weekend to do the exam, and it kind of sucked because when I was filling out all of the forms, I had to include the proteinuria finding in my health history. It asked questions like, “Have you ever seen a doctor for or been diagnosed with…” and filled in the blank with a laundry list of conditions. Unfortunately, protein in the urine was one of them, and I had to answer honestly. So, even though my doctor seems to think this finding is no big deal, it has certainly already been a game-changer for me! Even if it’s just in the way I need to fill out health history forms, you know?
To my surprise, the nephrologist’s office worked magic to “get [me] in soon” (which kinda-sorta worried me, to be honest), so at least I don’t have to wait long. My appointment is on Friday.
Despite the nature of all of this, and the inconvenience it’s been so far, I’m choosing to be optimistic about the whole thing right now. I have my fingers crossed that everything will work out in the end.
We are home.
Somewhere between the disorganization and chaos of our lives these last few months, this place became our home. I didn’t fully realize it until tonight.
Tonight, we walked our neighborhood to go trick-or-treat at a handful of houses with Nora, my brothers, their wives, and our nephew. I looked all around me to see kids running through yards, walking up and down driveways, ringing doorbells and collecting candy with calls of “trick or treat!” and polite “thank yous.” Houses lit up, doors open, porches illuminated by jack-o-lanterns. It was the kind of neighborhood perfection that you see in the movies.
It honestly gave me the warm and fuzzies.
At one point, as I surveyed the scene around me, I turned to Michael and said, “Wow. This is awesome. I love this.” This is exactly what I’ve always wanted, and what I’ve wanted to give to Nora.
It was a good night. Happy Halloween!
Another trip to a pumpkin patch (we really got pumpkins this time), plus a family dinner/pumpkin carving party at my mom’s = Halloween Eve. We also put the kids in their costumes so my mom could see them (she’s out of town tomorrow), but those pics will have to wait! :)
It was a beautiful fall day, and we certainly made the most of it. <3
We’re excited for tomorrow night, because we’ll actually have trick-or-treaters! In our condo, we never had them. My brothers and sisters-in-law and nephew are coming over for frozen pizzas, to hang out, and to take the kids to a few neighbors’ houses.
What is your favorite part about Halloween?
Eleven (holy crap) years ago, I was living it up during my first semester as a college freshman at a state college. I was having the time of my life. So much so, that I actually cried when I went home for Thanksgiving break. Dude… it was ONLY A WEEK. (Don’t even ask how much I cried when I had to go home for that first summer vacation, ha!) But I loved my life at school so much that I wanted to stay there 24/7/365.
Luckily for me, during the very first month, I had already met the girls who would become my core group of friends–and they remain so to this very day. I don’t remember how we all met, but several of the girls were pairs of freshman roommates. (Oh, and two are twin sisters–they’ve obviously know each other much longer than the rest of us.) Somehow, we all clicked and stuck together through the four years at school, and the seven years that have followed.
Sure, there were times with drama. Lots of drama. (We were girls, after all. Girls who lived together.) In fact, during those four years, we saw two girls exit our group. A new girl was brought into the fold (and remains!). Another faded away after we graduated, since she was the only one who moved far away from home. But seven years after leaving our quaint college town and crossing over into adulthood, our core group of seven is still here. Through I don’t even know how many break-ups. Six engagements. Five weddings. Countless new houses/apartments. One stalker (I wish I was kidding). Three pregnancies. And now, three babies.
We don’t see each other as often as we’d like, because trying to coordinate seven busy schedules? Tough stuff. But when we do, it’s like we’re back sitting on the floor of one of our dorm rooms. Together again. Except now, there are little rug rats who join us–which is still kind of hard for us to grasp when we’re together.
Seriously, we’re old enough to have kids?? :)
Beware of 2012, because… we’re all turning THIRTY. And I’m sure we’ll all celebrate that, too.
How do you keep in touch with your friends from college, despite busy lives? How often do you plan group gatherings? What do you do when you get together? Do you find that things are just like old times, or have things changed dramatically?
My little one is under the weather.
On Monday night, Nora woke up at 2:00 a.m. and was up for two hours–something that is very unusual for her. She didn’t seem sick at all, so we chalked it up to possible teething and went on with our day as normal (albeit a little extra tired).
But when I picked her up from daycare yesterday, she seemed a little out of it. She looked tired. Her eyes had that glazed-over, “sick look.” Our daycare provider said that she seemed quiet and not as active as usual. I thought she felt a little warm. Still, I took her home and Michael and I plopped her in her high chair to give her some dinner.
For the past week or so, Nora has been a rockstar when it comes to eating. It must’ve been the fact that I blogged about her food habits; she wanted to prove me wrong! She suddenly took to eating everything we put in front of her, so we’ve taken advantage by offering her a huge variety of new foods in the hopes that when she goes through another “picky stage,” we’ll have a bigger arsenal of familiar foods to pull from.
So anyway, we got her home last night and tried to feed her and… she wouldn’t eat anything. We knew something was up right away, since the things we were trying to serve her were some of her favorites. Macaroni and cheese! She wouldn’t touch it. We ended up getting her to eat a little bit of a dinner roll, but that was it. We called it quits on dinner, and I took her upstairs to get her ready for bed, even though it was early.
I discovered she did have a fever–101.6 by her ear thermometer. Not crazy high or anything, but a fever nonetheless. I gave her a bath, and she proceeded to freak me out a little bit by having chills when I was getting her pajamas on. Poor kid.
She promptly passed out, and we prepared ourselves to have another bad night. To our surprise, she slept quite well. We heard a couple of coughing fits throughout the night, and a few short little cries, but she always settled right back down.
This morning, she still looked terrible, and she once again had a 101+ degree fever, so we made her a doctor’s appointment.
It turns out the poor kid has a double ear infection. AGAIN. Or, still. We’re not sure whether it’s a new infection, or if the one she had (diagnosed on 10/10) just never went away, even after a 10-day course of antibiotics. We stopped by the pharmacy to get her a new, stronger antibiotic, and I took her home and put her down for a nap. Michael came home from work to take the afternoon shift so I could go into work to attend meetings and get some things done. (Hooray, full-time working parents!)
THE KID TOOK A 4-HOUR NAP. If that right there is not a sign of her illness, I don’t know what is.
By the time I got home, she was still looking pretty sick, but she was in good spirits.
Another fever tonight, so I don’t know what to do about daycare tomorrow. Our provider doesn’t really have any set rules, just expects everyone to use their best judgement. Ear infections aren’t contagious, but she has the start of a cold now, too. Today, her pediatrician said she didn’t think it was a good idea for her to return to daycare while she has the fever, so… I don’t know. *sigh*
The biggest development in all of this is that our pediatrician started talking TUBES. Nora has had a few ear infections, but I guess I didn’t realize that it was anything abnormal until today. By our count, she’s had 3-4 that we’ve treated since last Christmas, when she got her first one at three months old. Plus, there was an additional one that we detected at her 12-month well-baby appointment that we decided not to treat because she was showing absolutely no symptoms of it, and it didn’t seem to be bothering her.
The pediatrician essentially said that if she can get away with having just one more ear infection between now and March, we’d be good. However, if she gets two within that timeframe, she wants to order the surgery to have tubes placed in her ears.
Blahhhhh. Not what I wanted to hear. I know it’s a minor, common, outpatient procedure that takes like five minutes, but no one wants to put their baby under anesthesia, you know? Anyway, I’m not going to really spend time worrying about it until its actually upon us, but honestly, based on her history, I just don’t see us getting to March with only one more ear infection.
I’m curious… Does your child have tubes in his/her ears? How old was he/she when they were inserted? What was the rationale for the decision? How many ear infections had he/she been diagnosed with before the tubes? Did the tubes prevent any further ear infections? Were they/will they be removed at a certain age?
Even though tubes are just a possibility at this point, we do need to think ahead a bit because we are approaching open enrollment for health insurance with our employers. Right now, we have Michael and Nora on a high-deductible insurance plan through his job, and me on my own separate plan, as that was the most cost-effective solution for us. With Michael and Nora’s plan, we’ve been taking the extra money that we would be spending on premiums and putting it in a health savings account. We have a nice chunk of money in there after only 10 months of paying into it, but we’re not sure it’s enough to cover the surgery, since we still have a deductible/co-insurance we’d have to pay.
So, that begs the question… if we think it’s a good possibility that she’ll need this surgery, should we consider switching to a traditional health plan for 2012? The premiums are much higher, but the surgery would likely be fully covered. We have to wait to get the 2012 insurance offerings from our employers, then try to get an estimate for what the surgery would cost, and go from there. It’s definitely hard to figure out life insurance, but health insurance is a beast, too!
In the meantime, here’s hoping Miss Nora gets back to her old self soon… and that maybe, just maybe, her vulnerability for ear infections will disappear! (See that there? That’s optimism!)
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
