Piece of (My) Mind

(written Tuesday afternoon)

How ironic that I am giving away an immune booster in my current Giveaway, but this post is about my sick daughter! Oh well. I never said the Immune C would keep your kids from ever getting sick. But, experience has shown that it dramatically helps in the decrease or duration of symptoms when sickness does hit. You can go here to register to win two bottles of Li'l Critters Immune C gummy vitamins. Tomorrow I will give you a couple of new ways you can earn entries, and I will draw for the winner on Saturday.

Now back to the current post.

I remember when my older two were little and my insurance co-pay for doctor's visits was $10 and prescriptions were $5. It was worth a trip to the doctor for any little thing because the most I was going to be out-of-pocket was $15 and I had the assurance that my kids would not get any sicker.

Fast forward to 2011. Our insurance sucks! I don't know about yours. Ours got so bad that we switched to an HSA which basically does not afford us any coverage unless someone has a major illness or injury. Other-than-that, we are on our own.

So, when one of the kids comes down with flu-like symptoms, I have to weigh the options. I either take him or her to the doctor for a $200 appointment (with flu test) to be told it's not the flu and sent home to take over-the-counter medications (that I have to pay for on top of that), or take my chances that it's just a virus and treat with those same over-the-counter medications and worry incessantly that it will turn into something worse than the flu.

Peace of mind costs a heck-of-a-lot-more than $15 these days.

With Brynne I have decided to take my chances.

I thought about what I do for one of the older kids, or Rick or I, if we come down with something like this: We take DayQuil and Mucinex and Ibuprofen all day and take NyQuil and Mucinex and Ibuprofen all night. We drink lots of fluids. And I spray the heck out of my house with Lysol.

So I wrote down all of the ingredients contained in those various drugs above and headed out to Wal-Mart this morning. I stood in the children's medicine aisle and compared ingredients to come up with a children's form of the above regimen. A mere $60 later I came out with six bottles of medications, lots of grape juice and white grape juice, chicken noodle soup, crackers, Puff's with Lotion, some new cups with straws, PediaCare Gentle Vapors vapor plug refills and her a new pair of pjs.

She has now been medicated and changed into her new jammies. She's sipping grape juice from one of her new cups and wiping her little sore nose with her new tissues. She ate a tiny bit of soup and some crackers. She's laying on the couch watching whatever she wants on t.v. surrounded by the swirl of Lysol fumes. And she's getting lots of hugs from her family.

Thankfully her piece of mind comes solely from the love of her family. She has told me several times today that Dawson loves her because he has taken care of her.

And we'll hope nobody else comes down with it.