TheMommyBlog

Saturday, February 09, 2008 Familybits

So there I was (in the Congo) at dinner last night with my family to celebrate quadruple birthdays (Mom, my niece, Phil, and Daphne), ready to keel over from this cold and trying to shout across four people to my son in the corner of the booth, who had a sudden and astonishingly persistent need for communication. Finally, I asked him to write his question on the back of a supermarket receipt. It read, “Why do grownups treat kids as if they’re incapable and dumb?” I wrote back, “Because we needed you to focus on ordering, and you were last, and the waitress was waiting. Also, this is a much longer conversation, so why don’t we finish it at home?” Good grief.

We couldn’t have been at a noisier place (which is why I like bringing my children there) and I was constantly leaning over Daphne to tap Mom on the shoulder, lean in, and whisper hoarse requests and responses to be relayed down the table. I was Vito Corleone, presiding at a booth in Buco di Beppo.

And of course, Mom told me on Thursday to see a doctor before I got any sicker, and I didn’t go because I couldn’t demonstrate any sort of secondary, bacterial infection and would just be wasting the doctor’s time. Besides, I DON’T HAVE ANY INSURANCE. But that’s another rant.

Fast forward to one a.m. I woke up with the stickiest feeling in the back of my throat, and smelled a faint whiff of… yes, that’s right, ammonia. Ba-da-bing. Sinusitis. I so refuse to go to the urgent care clinic with no insurance. But Mom was right, as usual.

Oh, okay, I’ll tell you the story. I’m standing at the pharmacy counter last week, picking up my beauty meds, when the pharmacist tells me that my insurance has been canceled. It wasn’t even worth arguing about; I needed those prescriptions and it was just my luck, so I coughed up four hundred dollars and went home to find out what the hell happened this time.

It turns out that the company with which I was employed for FIVE DAYS last year but that also allowed me to switch from an expensive yet inadequate HIPPA policy to group coverage (yay for that) had switched carriers and neglected to bring me along with them.

I emailed the HR person there and got a response. “Oh, when I called to see if there were any COBRA folks to bring over, they told me no.” So that’s that. No one remembers the huge pain in the ass I was, there for only five days before being mysteriously fired, hadn’t even finished filling in my new employee paperwork, let alone all my new insurance papers, and suddenly we had to change everything to COBRA. Jesus wept.

I didn’t care, I was technically entitled to the insurance, and I got it. And I will be transferred to the new carrier or my name isn’t Smarty McJumpypants. Or is that my train domino nom de guerre? No matter.

Over the last few days I produced certificate after certificate of credible coverage—sadly, I have at least three spanning 2005-2007—in a feverish attempt to prove that I was covered up until the last day of my former employer’s contract, and also, ALSO, that I had coverage for the month prior to my employment with them. Wha?

I’m banging my head on the keyboard.

ewahfioewro0’wehy’wL EWAF H9W .

See?

Now that I’ve chugged a can of diet 7up, I think I can stand to go back to bed and let my sinuses fill up again once I get horizontal. Man, I love being the mom when I’m sick. Especially when my children tuck me in and bring me donuts in bed.