Category: regular

Not much LB news (short for Little Ben… our friends Jonny and Sarah have begun calling him LB, and I have found myself defaulting to it) to speak of this week, since we are in the medical equivalent of circling high above the airport waiting for clearance to land, with his sugery coming up next week.

But yesterday we got a visit from Child Developmental Services, represented by a pleasant lady named Heidi.  She was referred to us by our pediatrician, and her role is to come and introduce us to the early intervention program, where we can start early noting any developmental issues that may result from Benjamin’s Corpus Callosum disorder (if none of this makes sense, click on “The Short Version” at the top right to be brought up to speed).

It was a good appointment, and we were encouraged that she seemed to think that he is progressing at a normal rate developmentally at this point.  We knew that, but it is nice when an expert tells you what you already knew.  After all, they see tons of kids, and I just see this one, and I am seriously biased.

We are gearing up emotionally for the surgery on Wednesday.  Pray for us, as Tuesday will be a really long day of learning and pre-op stuff, and then Wednesday will be a rough day and the beginning of rough days for a few thereafter.  Pray that Jacqueline and I would hold tightly to each other through this (metaphorically and/or privately… it would be odd to walk around in a constant state of hug… and I am not a fan of Public Displays of Affection in general).  Seriously, though, these are the types of things that take marriages down with them, and I am keenly aware that our marriage is not above it.  Pray with us that we would hold tight to Christ and to each other.

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We just got a phone call from the folks at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, specifically the folks from anesthesiology who will be putting Benjamin down for his surgery on Wednesday.  They asked us to if we were going to be able to pay the full amount of the 10% not covered by our insurance company.  Then they told us the amount.

$480.

I’m better at writing than math, but if 480 is 10%, that means it is costing more to put my child to sleep for 45 minutes than we paid for our 2000 Ford Minivan.  Does that seem wrong to anybody else?

What does that money go toward?  The doctors deserve to get paid well, sure.  But for 45 minutes of work, I think nearly $5,000 is pretty excessive, unless there are 15 of them.  Even then, that would be more than 300 bucks per hour, according to my calculator.

We’ve got the money to pay the bill.  That’s not the issue, here.  I am not asking for the government or for anyone else to take care of us.  All of the people who support our ministry financially and prayerfully already have funded this, for which we are extremely grateful.  The issue is that somewhere somebody is getting far too big of a cut.  I’d love for someone with more of an understanding of how this stuff works to explain to me where all of that money is going. Please.  Someone explain this.

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