A Little Detour

Friday evening I put the boys upstairs with a movie of their own so that Mark and I could watch Antwone Fisher. (Good movie by the way. I would highly recommend it. It's a great--and true!--story of the power of the human spirit to heal and grow, no matter the past.) Anyway, we were halfway through it when the boys' movie ended, and I stopped ours to put them to bed. I was in the bathroom a few minutes later when I heard Mark say, "Kaitlyn, get your mom. I feel like I'm going to pass out." I darted out of the bathroom in time to ease him to the floor at the bottom of the stairs. I called Jason, who came over, looked at him, and decided that he needed to go to the ER via ambulance (so that he would have medical assistance on the way). When I drove to meet him, however, I got all the way to Newberg hospital before I realized that they had taken him to McMinnville. By this time, it was approaching midnight. I tried to keep a positive spirit, tried not to think too much about sleeping or precious wasted gasoline or any of that, and focused instead on good things: how reassuring it was to know that Jason was at our house with the kids, how fortunate I was that I had nothing planned for the next day so that I could most likely find time for a nap, how lovely the full moon was behind the clouds, how in the moonlight the pansies by the hospital entrance looked like a low-hovering swarm of bumble bees ... Still, I wasn't exactly thrilled as I turned around and went back, past Dayton, to McMinnville.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate McMinnville hospital? Well, I'll say it now. I really hate McMinnville hospital. I guess we've been spoiled by the warmth and friendliness of Newberg. Jason says our experience with them is certainly not typical, and so I guess I can only consider us fortunate that most of our ER visits land us amid (relative) comfort and among friends. Let's just say that our accidental exposure to McMinnville ER was a valuable reminder of how good we really have it most of the time. (It was also a good reminder to make SURE to tell the medics where to take him before they leave.)

I was also informed that Medicare now has a $100 copay for each ER visit. Oh, dear ... Well, there has to be options for covering that. (My friend Andrea said that for a lot of the people she sees at the pharmacy where she works, Medicaid covers whatever Medicare doesn't. Mark doesn't have Medicaid--yet! But we're certainly going to look into it muy pronto!)

Today ... fun stuff! We have a half-birthday party planned for Brendan at Discovery Meadows Park. It's not going to be anything fancy, just cake and such. But they have a large fountain the kids can run through, and we'll bring buckets of water balloons. I decided, when he was born, that once he turned five I would start doing parties for him in June, since his birthday gets swallowed up by Christmas. (Okay, so it's July. I've been a little busy, all right?) He's excited. I hope plenty of people come! We invited eight little boys. One mom called to say that her son, sadly, can't make it, and two have RSVPed that they can. And the other five? Well, I guess we'll just see who shows up!