Lacking: Common Sense

As it ended up, I had scheduled both J's kindergarten physical and my crazy x-ray all in the same day. There was much hoopla in getting J an appointment because his doctor no longer gives immunizations at his office. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing since I was looking for an excuse to find a new doctor for him, not because I don't love everyone in the office because I do, but because his doctor recently renamed his practice a "health spa" which I find a little weird. Even the nurse suggested I look elsewhere if our insurance covers immunizations, which it does, since its cheaper than going one place for a physical and to the health dept. for the shots. And easier, so I thought.

I took her suggestion and called the office which is right next door to theirs, they even share a waiting room. Now, I only talked to both the "old" and "new" offices, the health department, and the insurance company all at least once. All of which told me I probably want to go elswhere. Don't they want my business? I guess they all seemed to think it would be cheaper for me to go somewher that wasn't them. UGH. I finally settled on the "new" office and got an appointment one month out. When they scheduled my appointment for the x-ray I found out that the specialist was only going to be in town one day this month, the same day as the hard to get kindergarten physical. I told the nurse this much and she worked out the times for me like she understood what it would mean to change it (a big fat headache, 4 more phone calls...). For some reason I lacked all common sense and thought it was a good idea to go ahead and do both in the same day.

In the midst of gathering things up for both appointments plus a meal on the road I forgot one important thing: J's shot record. It didn't even cross my mind! We get to his new doctor and the recepionist asks if I would like to pay for a physical or have it billed to my insurance as a well child visit. I was thinking, "Hmmm, do I want to pay for it out of my pocket or have the insurance company pay for it? Isn't that why I have insurance?". As I was thinking, she asks "are you sure your insurance covers well child? UGH. I was pretty sure that they did but to make sure I call them from the office. Just as J was getting weighed the insurance company rep. says that they will cover it, as along as its coded correctly.

But then the nurse asks for his shot record, which I of course had forgotten and hadn't thought of until she mentions it. She then wants to code the physical differently and send me to the health department for his shots. Since I had changed doctors in order to do it all at once (and because we had talked up shots for a whole month AND because I wanted an excuse to change doctors) I said I would go home right then and come with the shot record so we could do shots TODAY. And that is what I did. And hopefully it didn't cost me out the wazoo. J got 4 shots which he cried on #2,#3, and #4 but still did great. And even though it was only 10:30am I still thought he deserved a Happy Meal with a new transformer toy in it. (Although I forgot socks so he couldn't play in the Playplace and I wasn't going home AGAIN).

One huge doctor's appointment in one day is all I can handle. Now I know. But its done and now we can officially go to kindergarten!