Croup

We seem to be running a ‘healthcare’ theme to fit the national mood.  Trying to predict what will happen once everyone has affordable, decent health care coverage?  Here’s our experience:

-When a small child nearly sheared off her pinkie, why yes, we did spend two surgeries, PT, etc etc to get it back in order.  Knowing full well it was was only a pinkie.  Felt a little extreme, but on the other hand, we’re glad to have a pretty useful little finger in exchange.   If said finger hadn’t survived the attempt, we’d feel like we had been extravagant.  But it did and is faring quite well, so instead we feel like it was money well spent.   That said, sincerely doubt anyone — us or doctors — would have put such an effort into the little finger if we lived in a place where we expected to pay the full cost out of pocket.   We are quite grateful for insurance.

-When a much smaller child came down with croup in the middle the night (4th child, but our first run-in with croup), the first instinct was to run to the ER.   Which is close to home, well-run, and for which we have insurance.  But, would have involved being out for hours, and probably would have ended with “Your child isn’t on death’s door.  Go home and put her in the shower”.  Luckily we had a handy baby book  and DH remembered a co-worker telling us what to do for croup. Between the two, we were set.  Shower did the trick first time, out into cool wet night air did it the second time, and in between we (I) just stayed with her through the night to make sure nothing worse developed.  Next day I considered calling the pediatrician (no charge) for some advice and reassurance, but decided we had it under control and didn’t need to speak to the nurse in order to be told what we had already figured out.  Croup summary: Even with a kinda scary incident and inexpensive or free healthcare, the hassle factor outweighed the need for reassurance.  [I assure you, we’d be in the ER in a second if the baby was showing signs of distress.]

My brilliant economic analysis based on those anecdotes: I don’t have any idea what will happen post-Obamacare.  I know that good insurance does encourage us to seek treatment we otherwise might decline.  I think in many cases we end up with a better health care decision as a result.  More accurately: we end up with better health.   I also know that “just because it’s free” doesn’t always mean we’re going to seek the treatment or professional advice.

My best guess on health care usage is that we”ll see an increase in visits for more “minor” situations.  Including much more preventive care, which means we’ll see a corresponding decrease in last-minute emergency care for people who put off going to the doctor.  I think on the whole, this will help with our nation’s overall physical health.

I’m hopeful that the health care exchanges will help the economy by allowing individuals to start small businesses without the fear of losing corporate health care.  I’m concerned that this will be run about as well as we run our other government functions: sometimes quite well, but sometimes quite badly.

I think that financially it is all very much part of the current national habit.  Take a look at this year’s 1040 forms.  Have you noticed the creep in complexity over the past decade?   (Have you noticed that an awful lot of people don’t do their own taxes anymore?  Um, excuse me?  How have we gotten to the point that a worksheet of basic arithmetic has generated an entire profession?)  I think we have reached a point where we expect our government’s work to be complex and burdensome, and we expect to be in debt.   As long as we think all that is normal, we should not be surprised our economy isn’t so healthy.

Which reminds me, I need to go clean my house.   Happy Holy Week.

Just added the Baby Name Wizard to the links.   Which to my knowledge I do not need for nine months from anytime, but did need to check on a character name.  Pulls name data from the Social Security Administration, so you can find out, for example, whether anyone was naming their daughter “Erica” in 1914.  (They weren’t.  We went with Erna.)  Handy for historical fiction.

BTW for the new readers, I happily take link suggestions for anything that remotely fits with the theme of the blog, and if you read here, I’ll gladly link you.

Now off to go continue getting my rear whipped at the writer’s conference.  Aria’s finger is doing great, and now has two fewer paper clips stainless steel surgical pins than it did a week ago.  Yay!

castle news catch-up

General update for you on doings at the castle:

The smashed finger keeps us busy. Surgery #2 appears to have gotten all parts into their proper places, and Aria goes for a follow-up this afternoon — hoping for good news there.  Poor girl, our surgeon (with whom the parents are very happy) is so excited to have salvaged the pinkie that he goes on and on with long technical explanations about just how bad it was.

(And in awe he asks the question we all have: How did you do this?  Which no one knows.  I did my best Br. Cadfael imitation, following the blood trail to the scene of the crime, but was unable to find that one clue that unlocks the case.  Note to self: Have children pay more attention when they are involved in freak backyard accidents.)

Anyhow, progress is good, but I am reminded that even relatively minor medical crises (it is a pinkie, after all) can sure suck some hours out of the week.

Back from the Beach We all slipped away over the weekend to say at the beach house of a generous benefactor.  In which we learned that:

1. Children do not like shopping at outlet malls for adult shoes.
2. Children think the woods are for playing in, not for listening in hushed silence to the many fascinating shorebirds that nest in the coastal woodlands.
3. Adults are surprisingly resistant to the news that they are parents now, and that “family vacation” does not involve the same quiet, reflective activities adults used to associate with “beach vacation”.  Slow learners, those parents.

Sleep deprivation has sneaked up on me. Not sure exactly when — one of those half-hour here and there things, gradually adding up to a grumpy, depressed mother whose willpower is gone, gone, gone.  Oh so lenten there.  The Olympics are probably in part to blame, and sleeping in an east-facing, lightly-shaded room at the beach house didn’t help on the other end.  So we’re in homeschool-rescue mode, where we modify the usual routines to get the mother back to human.

A book is underway! Try not to laugh.  (Yes, I *always* have a book underway. But this time it’s different, really.  Really.)  Ties directly into the smashed finger, beach trip and sleep-deprivation.   Have an idea (and an outline, and some lousy initial draft material that needs to be scrapped) about a homeschooling book I want to write.  Reality-checked with some off-blog internet friends– so people who have been reading my thoughts on these topics for five or ten years now — and got the go vote to give it a try.  Nice to have a cheering team.  So that’s the latest hobby.

Conveniently timed, since the Catholic Writer’s Conference starts tomorrow.  (Which means the kids were slated for a week of educational videos and independent projects already.  Yes, they do learn quite a lot that way — you can’t tv-school all the time, but in rationed doses, it is a legitimate part of the toolbox.)

Meanwhile, have to catch up on some real-life chores, pop into an SCA event, and finish up my latest Catholic Company review book, Saint of the Day.   Good book, and I’ll go into more detail on its strengths and weaknesses when I post the review.   Did I mention how much I love the review program?   Yay Catholic Company.

torture, surgery update

Entirely unrelated tidbits:

The Coalition for Clarity has two historical quotes of interest posted here. The first is St. Augustine, writing at the end of the Roman Empire of course; the second is Pope Nicolas I, writing in 886.

So many times history books try to sum up an entire society by what happened most.  Peering into the detailed lives of individuals gives a more accurate picture.

***

And our other topic: For those who are looking here for an update: Aria is doing great, little finger is pinned back together and she’s a happy girl.  Especially since this whole event has been associated with the aquisition of new clothes.  Prayers for good results at the follow-up appointment Feb 8th much appreciated.

Castle News – January 2010

Time for our first moment of posting here what used to go up over at the other blog, in this case the periodic general update.   Enjoy.

[For those who never read at Greencastle:  We have a green castle in our backyard.   It is for this castle that our homeschool was named.  And hence the name of the ol’ homeschooling blog.  And thus why I refer to what is going on ‘at the castle’.  Because there really is a castle. ]

School: December devolved into unschooling by mid-month.  All good, but it was an abrupt return to the routine after the new year.  For this spring the big push will be penmanship, walking, math, penmanship, math, penmanship, math, ack — science! — and a holding steady on all the rest.  That walking bit mostly about the Bun, now five and not a strong hiker.  The current routine is to do our first hour as a group (as per the fall: weather calendars, penmanship, ASL/French, religion), then head out for a walk in the neighborhood.   Enthusiasm varies.

In a change-up that is going well so far, I’ve been giving the kids a snack after the walk, and doing read-alouds during that time.  Which solves two problems — children getting hungry before lunch, and not wanting Mr. Boy to miss out on the girls’ read-alouds, because a lot of the books I read really are good for older people too.  From there, back to the same old schedule:  send the girls out for a break while I work with Mr. Boy, then he works on his own while I alternate between girls on reading and math.  Andabelle (now 3) is very happy to be allowed to draw and play with math blocks during this time.  On a good day, we’re done by lunch — yay.

SCA:  We haven’t done a whole lot, but we’ve had fun doing it.  I’m slowly becoming less laughable as a rapier (fencing) fighter, and am nearly fully-equipped.  Fun sport.   Aria & I went to a 12th Night event this month that was heavy on the dancing (yay!!), and the baklava.  Oh my goodness I have never seen so much baklava in one place — and it never ran out.  I was floored.  Just floored.   Difficult to believe I’ll see a feast like that again in this lifetime.

Speaking of which: Death still packs a fair sting in this life, even after accounting for the vast and unfathomable richness of the next.  Please pray for the repose of the soul of my grandfather, Hank Holder.  Thanks.

Latin Watch:  The boy and I are learning to conjugate.  Very slowly.  We’ve been stuck in chapter six for over a month, and no end in sight.  It’s that ugly moment in learning a language where you can’t cruise anymore, you have to stop and force yourself to work work work.  I need to carve out some time to work on that.

Annual writing binge: Why yes, it is winter, I do have tendonitis.  Not helped by the encouragement of the SuperHusband, who went and got me my own computer for Christmas.   And I’ve been neglecting the blog while I’m at it.   Nothing publishable at this point.  I write the way other people knit: it is a vacation, not a vocation.

Around the house: SuperHusband and Mr. Boy have been renovating the castle yard, so that it begins to look less and less like barbarians own the place.  (Barbarians do own the place, but we are trying to conceal that fact).  Landscape timbers, flagstone walkway, new fence across the back.  I moved some ivy already, and soon I will get to put in a bunch of plants.  Yay.

–>  There are, by the way, no ‘before’ pictures.  You don’t want to know.

Everything else: I think normal.   Mostly the goal for the spring is to hold steady on regular life.   That should be plenty.