Health Care

(Note: usually, I leave this sort of stuff out of this particular blog because it's political, and I try to keep that sort of thing out of here. But this really is related to The Boy, as it's my experience.)

In the car at 26th and Hiawatha, I thought "I wonder if there is anything they can do with the baby; if we can donate it to research or something. I wonder if anything good can come of this." Then I thought "I wonder if our health insurance will cover this. We can't afford this."

After he was born and he was stabilized, I had a chance to revisit my nervousness about money. I called my health insurance representative from my hospital room. They said we were 100% covered. I asked again. "What about the baby?" "100 %" the voice said. I didn't really believe it, but I was relieved.

This was going to be expensive.

As I wound my way through my son's hospitalization and the statements started rolling in; as I learned more about prematurity and read up on the statistics, I started to wonder about other people. Sure, we are fine, but if other people are not, are we really fine?

According to The March of Dimes, in 2006, 12.8% of babies (542,893) were born preterm--an increase of 16 percent over ten years. Furthermore, "during 2004-2006 in the United States, preterm birth rates were highest for black infants (18.3%), followed by Native Americans (14.1%), Hispanics (12.1%), whites (11.6%) and Asians (10.7%)." The associated economic cost in 2005 was $26.2 billion. Preterm birth rates are highest for women over 40 and women under 20. Everything I heard from doctors was that they "don't really know" what causes it in most cases.

If you add in health insurance statistics, it becomes pretty likely that many of these preterm babies are born to women who do not have health insurance: 19.8% of women of childbearing age are uninsured; Hispanic women of childbearing age are twice as likely to be uninsured; Native American and African American women are also more likely to be uninsured; and 40.7% of all births were covered under Medicaid in 2002. Apparently, the care for one baby like mine could pay for the care of 12 "healthy births." To sharpen the focus: 40 percent of preterm births in 2005 were covered by Medicaid (1).

I am not uninsured. I am fortunate that my employer provides excellent benefits, and I would not choose a public option at this point. But what would happen if I lost my job, which is likely due to funding cuts? What would happen if I could not find another job that also provided benefits? Well, in my case, I could go on my husband's insurance. But he works for the same public entity as I, and his job could go away, too.

What would this little family do then?

My baby cost $20,482.62 to be born and another $355,316.80 before he could come home, and he had no complications. What if, like many of the mothers of premature babies, I had no health insurance? If it's not a "right," then is it just too bad, so sad about my tiny baby? After all, he has never worked a day in his life. What happens to the little family? That baby will be cared for, and someone will have to pay. Maybe it will be medical assistance. Maybe it will be the little family, for the rest of its life and beyond, most likely putting them onto, or keeping them on, some sort of public aid. For the rest of their lives. And beyond. Someone will have to pay.

Someone always has to pay.

Do I benefit from the despair of others? Do I benefit when fellow citizens are sinking under economic pressures, many of which are caused by health care expenses? In my mind, we all suffer. We none of us live in a vaccuum; our society is only as strong as our most marginalized people, and we will sink or swim together, in the end.

It's pretty obvious where I stand on this issue. I believe that health care is a right, not a privilege. I think that tying health insurance to employment does little more, in many circumstances, than keep people in unsatisfying jobs, often thwarting creativity and ingenuity in favor of very real concerns about the household bottom line. I do not believe that "the market" is the appropriate place to put our health and our lives. I do not believe that "the market" has our best interests at heart. "The market" cares most about "the market," and allowing it more license and access will not make it more responsible. When profit is allowed into our health, I think our health suffers. I do not understand why people put so much trust in "the market." And yes, given the choice, I trust the government more. At the very least, the government has an agreed upon charter in The United States Constitution. "The market" has no such responsibility to the public trust.

Do we really want the nation's health in the hands of the people who handled our mortgages?

1 Preterm birth By Richard E. Behrman, Adrienne Stith Butler, Institute of Medicine (U.S.).

Committee on Understanding Premature Birth and Assuring Healthy Outcomes

Still Parenting...

but not publishing...

This is a typical weekend morning at the Whumpus House:

Ireland Tour 2014: Drogheda March 13

Ireland Tour 2014: Drogheda March 13, a set on Flickr.

It begins with a splat and ends with a pout.

Chronicles of a Folk Family--Ireland: Drogheda March 12

March 12, 2014

The bus driver gave us a ride to Drogheda.

Seriously.

We didn’t have tickets because the vending machine would not take our stupid, old-fashioned, magnetic strip cards, and we had not stopped at an ATM for cash yet. The bus driver let us get on anyway, saying we could get cash at the arrival station. We probably looked rather pathetic, at least I did, even with my airport bathroom refresh, and Finn was concerned about missing the bus, so he must have taken pity on us.

Drogheda is about 30 kilometers north of Dublin, and we had chosen it partly because of a BBC series we watched on Ireland and partly because of its proximity and accessibility from the Dublin airport. I wanted a place to chill out and adjust before the tour starts on Sunday.

Customs in Dublin was a breeze, and we met up with Pete's mom for breakfast and chit chat in the airport, which was relaxing as no one was in a hurry. It was this bus hiccup that threatened to put my tired ass over the edge. Being on the bus was good, but now I was concerned about the part where we got cash and paid the nice man.

Then he let us off the bus, no charge. Cheers!

But we still needed to pay a cab driver to get us to the hotel, and we still had no cash. The driver stopped at a convenience store where they also could not take our primitive card, so finally we hit a bank ATM, where we were successful in procuring sweet, sweet Euros.

Finn fell asleep on the bus. I managed to keep him awake in the taxi.

At the hotel, before my first pint, I was upsold into a bigger, more expensive room. We arrived on the early side, and the woman at the desk looked at us like we were nuts because we were booked into a double room, and she knew there was no way that was going to work. Initially, I thought it would be fine, but then I checked my exhaustion levels and realized that I needed to be sure I could sleep.

This is how we found ourselves in the Presidential Suite, bitches!

Now, granted, that is more glamorous and important than it sounds, but we do have a king bed and two twins in separate rooms, plus two televisions. It works out well for a bed-hopping trio like us (be nice, this is a family blog. Bitches), and I have wound up in one of the twins (ah ah ah, again… family blog) at some point both nights so far.

The rest of the day was innocent enough: resting/napping/checking out a defensive hill tower/groceries at Tesco/graveyard.

Back at the hotel for dinner time, we sat down and ordered our pints. Finn asked for sausage then fell asleep and stayed asleep. We shifted him back and forth and ate in little shifts, just like when he was an infant, until I finally brought him upstairs, made him pee, and got him into bed. He was rather upset about it, but eventually settled down. All was well.

Little did I know.

Chronicles of a Folk Family, Ireland: Traveling

March 11, 2014

“O airport snow, you are many-layered, sad, and dirty like a hate cake.” -kittywhumpus

Finn was zonked out, and it was before 6:00. Granted, we had just been traveling for 36 hours, but it was still remarkable. He fell asleep on my lap before we even ordered dinner. He said he wanted sausage, we said OK, aaand Scene.

Considering that the cab picked us up at home in Minnesota at 9:15 a.m. on March 11, we didn’t arrive in Dublin until 8:00 a.m. local time on March 12, and he slept for all of two hours on the plane across the ocean, it’s not surprising. Still, Finn volunteering sleep is always somewhat of a shocker. The fact that he stayed asleep for the next 13 hours was nothing short of astounding.

Thinking back, with hindsight which is, duh, how you think back, there are things I would do differently and NO, this time I am not talking rethinking the whole brilliant “having kids” notion.

Finn's behavior at the Minneapolis airport was not awesome, and I was thinking we were in for a long, long trip, but there’s nothing I can really change about the logistics. Airports and their lines are boring for kids. Then we had a long, long layover in Chicago, but it didn’t cause any problems.

What I would do is cram every ounce of liquid I could into my child during the entire trip. At least when he was awake. As annoying as it is to try to get your kid to pee when evacuating fluids is anathema to him, what happened later was much worse.

Another thing I would somehow change is this: When we got off the plane in Dublin, Pete looked exactly as he had when he boarded the previous morning in Minnesota. I looked like I had melted. Now, I am not saying that I would go back and make Pete look terrible, because that’s stupid. I have to look at him more than he does, but I would like to find a way to not have looked like his dowager older sister when we arrived in Ireland. I dipped into the Ladies' for a full refresh, and then it was fine, but please, what is up with that?

“Hide away, Folk Family…” -They Might Be Giants

This is our first international tip with a kid. When we were in Ireland in 2007, we were a carefree somewhat younger, child-free couple who could get wasted at the pub at 3:00 in the afternoon or stumble back to the hotel at 2:00 in the morning. The celtic folk rock band was a blastocyst. We had conversations and laughter, like, every day.

Frankly, I’ve been dreading much of this trip, for a number of reasons. I already chafe at the yoke of motherhood on a normal day, and returning me to Ireland, where I had so much fun and so much to see and learn, but without the freedom I enjoyed didn’t sound like fun. And yeah, that’s whining about a ridiculous problem, but there you have it.

Considering that this trip is a tour for the band Pete plays in, Hounds of Finn, and he will be musically and socially busy and in demand, it adds to the Yoke. I don’t like being Folk Nanny, which is what I generally feel like when we drag Finn along on Hounds business. Don't get me wrong: the band is quite talented, and I enjoy their music, but being Folk Nanny is not fun. I'm relatively used to the changes and deprivations that accompany motherhood, but I don’t cuddle up to them for reassurance and identity.

All in all, Finn was pretty good, even considering the insufferability in the Twin Cities airport. For one thing, he has new luggage, over which he is very protective and excited. It’s like a Marvel Superhero Discotheque with lights and everything. It’s brand new, and it’s something we never would have bought without our tax refund. I’d be excited, too. I kind of am.

Because Chicago-O'Hare has distractions specifically for children, our 7-hour layover was absolutely tolerable, and he had plenty to do. Then he fell asleep at the airport bistro where we had dinner, and I didn't even give him any of my Proseco. He watched a movie on the plane (Happy Feet 2, which is, I am sure, just as implausible as the original), ate a little bit of his dinner, and then napped for a couple of hours, which is more than I can say for his parents.

We didn't think about whether or not he was drinking enough water or milk; it's never been an issue for him. I had my fluids in the form of liquid courage. I am a nervous flier, and I like to choose from the white wine family to chill my ass out. It helps but does not cure.

Maybe Finn would like a nice Riesling, but I hear that’s frowned upon.

Bonus P.S. We had a lady pilot to Chicago, which was awesome, but I long for the day when this is not remarkable.

Chronicles of a Folk Family--Ireland Tour: Traveling

Ireland Tour: Traveling, a set on Flickr.

Photo album on flickr of our travel time, en route to Ireland for a tour with Hounds of Finn, the band Pete plays in.

(Please comment if the album is not public. Flickr permissions can be wonky sometimes.)

Good Night, Sleep Tight...

IKEA furniture is designed to be easily assembled.

And remain assembled.

When you move, you don’t take apart all your IKEA furniture and put it back into its boxes. If you did that, people would rightly question your sanity.

Had someone seen me, in my son’s room, wielding tiny Allen wrenches and muttering under my breath about vermin from the depths of hell, that person could also rightly question my sanity.

But I was not compulsively cleaning or in the throes of a righteous rage that was compelling me to dismantle my surroundings.

It was because my son’s bed had become possessed by demons of the underworld: bed bugs.

A few months ago, I wrote about babywhumpus’ mystery hives. They were chronic, and I put him through numerous blood and poop tests, for everything from tuberculosis to giardia, and all the results were normal.

Then, the Sunday night before a very busy weekend, I heard Pete call to me from FJ’s room “Karen, could you come here a minute?” It was a serious and stern voice, plus he used my first name and not a moniker like “Honey.” I thought I was in trouble. And as it was bedtime preparations for Finn, which are not always awesome, I knew it wasn’t trouble of the good kind. I glanced at the front door, but escape was not an option. I entered, and Pete showed me a small, flat, brown insect. It was flea-sized, but definitely not a flea, as it had no wings and was distinctly not black. It looked more like a small tick, but not quite.


My stomach sank, and I went through a number of emotions in rapid succession. Denial (Fleas, right? Not what I think it is), then despair (Because I’m pretty sure it is what I think it is), and then a mix of anger and relief (crap, this is going to be a pain in the ass to get rid of, and thank goodness my son doesn’t have some sort of auto-immune disease worthy of a differential diagnosis on House, M.D., though Hugh Laurie is hot and... Wait, what was I thinking about? Oh... bed bugs). This took a few seconds (see musings re: Hugh Laurie), and then I marched back to the living room to consult the Oracle.


It didn’t take much time on the Intertubes to confirm my suspicions: it was a bed bug. We put FJ to sleep in our room, and I started slowly taking the bed clothes off his bed; comforter, sheets, pillows, stuffed animals. Then I took the cover off of the ladder on the side of the bed, the thing we never have to wash...

It was a grotesquerie.

If you need any convincing that you should be watching out for this, let me describe what you are seeing. The little white bits are eggs. The bigger white bits are larvae. There are translucent nymphs in there plus immature, brown bugs. Then there are the full-grown bugs, which are about the size of an apple seed. They are in no way microscopic. They are full-on bugs of the order Hemiptera, which are considered the “true bugs.” It includes aphids and cicadas. They are not related to ticks.

They are truly awful and disgusting, and I hate them. Yeah, I know, I know: they are just doing what they evolved to do, blah blah BLAH. They were sucking the blood out of my child for three months, and they deserved to die.

P.S. Are you itching yet?

I did some research on Angie's List, and I made a call. A technician came and did a visual inspection, confirming the bugs in FJ's room. Then they brought in a bug-sniffing dog (no lie), a beagle mix named Ricky. He came in with his handlers and cased the joint. He went nuts in FJ’s room and had a minor alert in our room, which may have been nothing. Nowhere else. It was the same price to treat both bedrooms and the living room, so that’s what we opted for.

But we couldn’t do it until after our vacation, which meant we had to continue to live with the little bastards for almost a month. It was gross. It was stressful. But FJ's hives ceased, in the meantime, so we knew for certain this was the source.

Even now, six months after we have (hopefully) eradicated them from our living space, I can’t think about it without experiencing the same anger and disgust I felt when we first discovered that they were feasting on our son. It’s the reason this essay has remained unfinished; a disjointed smattering of paragraphs spreading over page after page, without coherence, beauty, or humor.

Because bed bugs suck.

And once you have gone through it, you see the world differently.

It changes the way you travel, the way you look at a movie theatre seat, how you think about second-hand stuff. You certainly stop saying "Good night, sleep tight..."

Bed bugs are equal opportunity feasters. They don’t care if you are rich or poor. They don’t care who you are or where you live. They don’t care how clean your house is. You will always hear stories about the seedy hotel, the questionable hostel, or the hoarder house, but all bed bugs need is blood, which you have in abundance, carry around with you, and keep making more.

They are absolutely everywhere, so train your mind away from the stereotypes and onto how to keep them out of your life.

If you live. If you walk the earth. If you travel. If people travel to you, you could get them. You could pick them up at a public place, but the most likely way is through travel, be it in transit, like on an airplane or train, visiting people, or staying in hotels. We don’t know how we got them, but it doesn’t particularly matter.

It's expensive to get rid of them, and the likelihood that you can do it yourself is slim to none. You know what? Just don’t even try. Chemicals won’t work. Natural treatments won’t work. Once you have them, you need to call someone. Someone who knows what they are doing. Someone who will bring in the dogs. And I’m not kidding.

You can do your own visual inspections if you know what you are looking for--get on your knees or on a ladder and get close up, with a flash light, during the day. Inspect cracks and crevices in wood, along baseboards, in the corners, behind pictures, on the wall behind furniture, in furniture. You might not see them, but that does not mean they are invisible to the naked eye or are not there. You may not react to the bites. You may have a delayed reaction to the bites. The bites may look like hives. Or mosquito bites. Or nothing at all.

You need to call someone, and not just anyone. You need to call someone who knows about bed bugs; who has dealt with them; who may even specialize. Not your regular pest dude with a black light who will look at your bed frames to make you feel better. These little true-bug bastards can live for a year without feeding, so if they are in your luggage in the basement or attic, they can wait patiently until the next time you leave for an exotic destination like Indianapolis or Trenton.

You don't want to live with them, and you don't want to spread them.

The best detection is with bug-sniffing dogs. These dogs are trained the same way that drug-sniffing dogs are, and they can detect the presence of bed bugs down to a single egg casing.

Then, the treatment will happen. And treatment means baking the house. Heat. It’s the only thing that works, so just get used to it. Your furniture, walls, clothing, anything that won’t melt or come apart will need to be heated to 120 degrees for a sustained period of time. It takes five hours.

You will have to move without leaving the house. You may need to relocate your animals; you may need to find another place to sleep and hang out during treatment day. After you have moved all your crap to the center of the rooms, they will bring in heaters and fans, hand inspect anything that can’t be treated, put down a chemical barrier, and heat the ever-living crap out of your house. One guy or gal will stay behind to turn your stuff, making sure the heat gets to everything, so remove and inspect anything you don’t want them handling. (Our goodie box went to the basement.)

When you come home, it will look like someone ransacked your moving day, which is basically what has happened. They will go through all your drawers and the boxes you packed. Everything will be moved and tossed around. And you will have to put it all back together.

I used it as an opportunity to really clean and repaint two of the three rooms we heated. It made me feel better to get something out of it aside from the absence of blood-sucking parasites.

Now, when we travel to hotels, we take off the headboard and inspect it with a flashlight. These usually slide up and can be lifted off their brackets. We inspect the baseboards, corners, behind pictures, mattress seams, and frames. We check bureau drawers. It's a pain in the ass, but not as much of a pain in the ass as packing up all your stuff and spending 1500 dollars to get rid of bugs later.

Which reminds me... Fair warning to all travelers coming to our house: when we retrieve you at the airport or other terminal, your luggage--ALL your luggage--is going into garbage bags. When we arrive at our house, you will be putting all your clothing, etc. into another garbage bag, and it will be going into the dryer. Anything that cannot go into the dryer will remain on our porch in garbage bags or will be hand inspected for the presence of bugs. Don’t take offense. We will happily undergo the same treatment when we visit you.

Because we are NOT going through this again.

And we don’t want you to go through it a first time.

Here is a flickr album of our fun experience.

What you need to know, in general

Bed bugs are visible to the naked eye. In all their stages, from egg to nymph to full-grown bug. The most common thing people ask is, "How big are they?" And they are genuinely shocked that the little assholes are not microscopic. Far from it. The eggs are about a millimeter in diameter and the full-grown bugs are about the size of an apple seed (1/4" to 3/8" long or 5-9 mm). They look a lot like a tick, but they are not related. These are TRUE BUGS, bitches. If you come over to my house, I'll show you. I have some of them preserved in alcohol. I'll offer you a drink first. Cocktails and bed bugs!

Any place can have them. It does not matter how high-end the hotel or how clean the house.

Look for them in mattress seams or backpack seams or suitcase seams or toiletry bag seams, but they also love wood (who doesn't?). They will make a nest in the corners of your wooden bed frame, in the screw wells, or on the wall by your bed. They like baseboards, too.

Cold only works to kill bed bugs after 7-10 days in the freezer. Heat works more quickly, but heat treatments are still sustained for five hours.

They don't fly.

They mainly feed at night, but you can still find them during the day. In fact, that's when you need to look for them. During the day, with a flashlight (not a black light). They do not fluoresce. Using a black light to detect them is useless.

They can live for a year without feeding. So they could be sitting in your suitcase, just waiting for you to take them on a trip. A vacation with a dozen or so of your most blood-sucking friends.

You need to hire a professional who knows all of the above. That professional needs to check your entire house, not just your beds, and preferably with a bed bug sniffing dog. Basement, living spaces, storage, luggage: all of it needs to be checked.

Here is a list of informational links on bed begs.