I have a love/hate relationship with insurance. All sorts of it. I love to have insurance, but hate to pay the premiums for it. I love that it covers my expenses for auto and medical when I need it, but hate to try to understand how it works.

Yesterday it started sleeting and by 3:30pm the roads were already very slick. Jeremy was working at his 2nd job delivering pizzas and went on one more delivery before he was supposed to get off at 4pm and wrecked his car. He is fine and got home safely so we're all grateful for that. But now we have to find out if our insurance is going to cover this since he was working at the time. So please pray for that.

He has been working at his 1st job for 3 months now so we recently (like yesterday) got our insurance cards for our new medical insurance. I started calling people to see if we were going to have to switch drs for Damon again (we are) and found out that all the dr visits, ER visits, and hospital stay he had two weeks ago were all at out of network providers. But we didn't know because we just got the card yesterday. And the start date of coverage is the 12th (before all the above mentioned visits took place) so technically they should have all been filed under our new ins. I don't know what to do. I have to call medicaid and let them know we have a new ins, and I'm afraid they will reject all those because we had the new ins at the time of the visits. (They will NOT pay anything until primary ins pays their portion.) And since they were all out of network providers, there is a $500 deductible....see why I hate it?

Plus as I mentioned above, Damon is going to have to switch drs. Dr Grote has been so great and I'm really frustrated that we have to switch. It's ridiculous that you should have to change drs because this or that company doesn't allow you to go to them. R.I.D.I.C.U.L.O.U.S.

I'm just stressed out by this stuff and it makes me so distracted that I just kind of walk around my house from room to room with a blank stare. God's gonna have to take over quick!

Damon and I got home today around 4pm. The drs did rounds this morning about 10:30 and said we could go, but it was almost 3pm before we left Springfield because we had to wait on Damon to get a flu shot and for them to arrange for us to get a breathing treatment machine (otherwise known as a nebulizer) for us to use at home. They want Damon to do the breathing treatments for a few days longer. If it hasn't been posted on here before now, Damon does have RSV. The dr's told me that he needs to stay away from all small children until his cough is completely gone, as he still might be contagious. I'm thinking that we are going to try harder to stay away from large crowds of children until winter/cold/flu season is over because I just don't like him having to go the hospital at all. So pray with me for Mr. Groundhog to NOT see his shadow in a few weeks. Or for him TO see it, I can't remember which one means that spring is coming...anyway, thanks for the prayers for him. Talk to you all later.

Sarah

Damon does have RSV and his fever is down today. The nurse told Sarah that if he can go without the oxygen and his fever stays down tonight, he will get to go home tomorrow. Please keep him in your prayers!

Posted by Lacey:

Sarah called this morning and they are in the hospital in Springfield. Damon's fever was still not going down even after doses of Motrin. They have done a bunch of tests and a chest X-Ray. They don't know anything yet, but the X-Ray didn't show much so they know he doesn't have pneumonia. His SAT's however are low so he is on oxygen. Please pray for him and that his SAT's will return to normal!

Just as the boys and I were popping up some popcorn to watch a movie, I noticed Damon was starting to breathe a little fast, and labored. He had a fever all day yesterday and coughed a little but nothing much. I called Dr Tong's office and spoke w/ the dr on call for him. He thought I should take him in to be seen just to be safe and advised me to go to Urgent Care vs the ER because they would probably have a pediatrician on call. (He lives in Springfield and they do things like that there.) So we went to Urgent care and got in right away. The dr looked at him and decided given his heart history he wasn't comfortable treating him there and sent us to the ER. So next time I'll know better than to go there, although it did save us a long wait in the lobby because the Urgent Care doc called the ER and had them get a room all ready for Damon.

He had a chest xray, RSV and flu tests and a blood test and they decided he has a virus, go figure. The RSV and flu came back negative. The labored breathing was due to the fever. We got to come home around 1:15am. Damon still has a fever today, even after two doses of Motrin and 1 of Tylenol, which is still causing him to have labored breathing. I've made an appt w/ Dr Grote for tomorrow morning just in case he keeps running the fever through the night. So please pray for Damon to get better!

We had been to the bouncing house several times before today, but Damon was usually more interested in playing in the water fountain than actually bouncing on any of the blow up gyms. He was always very happy when I held him and jumped or crawled up the stairs (while holding him) and go down the slide while holding his hand, but he never would stray too far from me otherwise.
There is one apparatus in particular that we both like. It has two slides with a tunnel of “stairs” going up the middle. I use the term stairs lightly because it’s actually just a pretty steep slope with tiny little handles and very skinny ledges going up on which you are supposed to stand. It is definitely designed for children’s feet! Usually when we go up, I hold Damon in one arm and use my other hand to hang on for dear life to those tiny handles so I don’t go careening backward onto the other children who are usually following right behind. When we were about half way up, I looked up and saw a fellow mom’s little girl sitting at the top all by herself. She was all alone so I knew she had climbed all by herself. The thing is, she’s only 3 days older than Damon, which makes her just over 2 years. And she’s a little girl, very petite. I was amazed that this tiny little thing could’ve climbed all the way up there by herself.
Damon and I finished the climb to the top and came whizzing down the slide laughing. When we got down, the little girl’s mom was standing at the bottom. “She’s such a good climber!” I said. “I can’t believe she can go all the way up there by herself.” She smiled and mentioned something about her always trying to keep up with her big brother. “Wow. If Damon tried to do that, he’d probably fall all the way down to the bottom.” I said as I shook my head. As we stood there talking, Damon told me he wanted to get back up so I set him on the bottom of the entrance to the slide so he could play. A few seconds went by where I wasn’t directly watching him and when I looked to the spot that he had been just before he wasn’t there. I knew he hadn’t gotten down so I climbed onto the bouncy slide and looked up the steps and he had already climbed halfway up! “Good job buddy!” I said proudly, as I climbed up behind him. All the while thinking that the further up he got, the harder it would be for him since the slope got steeper. But I decided to just see how far up he was willing to venture before rescuing him.
I stayed right behind him, with my hand poised to catch his little bottom if his feet slipped and watched as he slowly climbed up. His hand grabbed the handle, knee up on the step, then the other hand grabbed the step above and he would switch from his knee to his foot, then get the other foot up and so on it went until he was at the very top. And I hadn’t touched him once! We both made our way to the slide opening, grabbed hands, counted to three, then “WEEEEE” down we went. “Do gen mommy!” he shouted. “Oh Damon, mommy needs to take a break,” I said as I climbed down. “You go ahead.”
Off he went up the tunnel all by himself. I waited for what seemed like several minutes while he slowly made his way to the top. Once he got halfway up, I couldn’t see him anymore, but I resisted the urge to follow him. Finally, he made it. I couldn’t help but tear up when I saw his little head pop around the corner at the opening of the slide. He was all smiles as he said “Mama, I do it mysef!” “Alright buddy, come down the slide to mommy.” He sat there for a minute and even asked if I would come up with him, but I stayed where I was. “Ok Damon, one, two, three, GO!” And he pushed himself over the edge and down the slide he came.
I jumped onto the bottom of the slide and wrapped my arms around him, tears now streaming. “You did it Damon! Mommy is so proud of you!” I squeezed him so tight as I thanked God for this little triumph. For so long I wondered how much our little miracle boy would be able to do; questioned the amount of normalcy he would experience living his life with a heart defect. There was a time when he couldn’t even eat without medical help and now he was climbing the steps to a slide that I found difficult.
Damon played on that slide for several more minutes until he saw a blue ball that he wanted and ran to go get it. Every time he went up those steps and down that slide by himself, my heart just burst with happiness and pride. But as I sat there watching him, I began thinking to myself why I doubted so much that he could do it in the first place. He’s such a tough little boy; making it through two surgeries like a champ. God spoke to my heart right then. “Sarah, I have seen him through so much more than this, why would you not trust me to help him now?”
As we made our way back to the table where the rest of the moms were gathered, I found the one I had been talking to earlier. “I guess I’ve learned not to tell anyone that my son can’t do something. Because he (with God's help) will prove me wrong.”

So Damon had been drinking soy milk for the past week or so and he seems to be doing a little better with his pooping. His diaper rash is gone and the hemorrhoid isn't bothering him anymore. On Friday he had a couple of good dirty diapers. But tonight I noticed him straining again so we'll see.

In other news, Cade had his 3rd birthday on the 9th, but then that night they had to rush him to the hospital because he had a high fever and was acting really sluggish. Turns out he had RSV. I didn't think kids could get RSV that old, and obviously the drs don't either because Cade, and Damon for that matter, was not made to get the vaccine for RSV this year. But he got to come home that night and enjoy his cake. God answers prayer, that's for sure. Talk to you all later.

Sarah

I've been running so many New Year's resolutions through my head for the past few days. I haven't really committed to any of them yet though. What about you, have you made one? We'd love to hear it.

Ok, so I guess I did commit to one and it is that I RESOLVE to get Damon's pooping problems under control. I'm sorry if you're grossed out, but this is the life I live. The poor guy was so constipated for so long, we would give him Miralax so he could go, then he would go all day and get diaper rash so we'd have to quit giving the Mirlax and he'd get constipated again. Then all of a sudden he got sick and was throwing up and had diarrhea and fever. So he wasn't constipated anymore, but had horrible diaper rash that made his precious little bottom so red and sometimes raw and bleeding. So Jeremy got online and found some Bag Balm, literally the stuff they put on cow's udders to keep them from getting irritated after milking. It seems to work ok, but he still has the diaper rash. And because of the months of being so constipated and having to strain so hard to go, he now has a hemorrhoid. So the past few days it has been bothering him really bad. I've been using Prep H to help w/ the pain/discomfort but he is still getting pretty raw because he poops all day, but only little bits at a time and has to get his diaper changed a lot. Anyway, back to when he got sick. I took him to see Dr Grote and he said no milk or juice until the diarrhea is gone. So Damon went for about two weeks without having any milk. And he wasn't constipated.

So I go along about my business, thinking hey maybe he's over it. Then he gets constipated again. And I was discussing this with my best friend Lacey because we're mommies and that's what we talk about, that and the postman and how inconsiderate he is. And she says "We have to give our baby soy milk cause she's lactose intolerant and get terribly constipated when she has regular milk." And I still go about my business, not really taking in what she has said. Then the next day it dawned on me that maybe that's Damon's problem. So yesterday I bought some soy milk. We are going to try that out for at least two weeks and see what happens. I hope and pray that I have figured out the problem and this will be the end of the boy's pooping hardships. Now that you're nice and grossed out, have a great night and I'll talk to you later.

Sarah