We've had an amazing streak of not having to drive to Bethesda for medical care. After Micah's 6 month well-baby appointment in October, we only had to trek up there once this whole entire winter, when I thought Micah might have an ear infection. Otherwise, no one has had any sickness that required the services of a doctor. Yay!
But our streak has come to an end. Not that anyone is sick, however. Nathan is filling out his application for Civil Air Patrol encampment, and we realized he needed to know his blood type. Well . . . I have no idea! So I called the pediatric clinic, and it turns out he has never been blood-typed. So the doctor put in the order, and Nathan and I drove all the way to Bethesda (excuse me, I should refer to it by its new catchy acronym--WRNMMCB. LOL!) to have his blood drawn this afternoon. There was no waiting at the lab--it's so nice, now that the second lab has opened up in the new America building. The lady missed the first time, Nathan almost fainted, but the blood was taken, so all's well that ends well! Just a 2 hour chunk of my day gone!
When the doctor left a message to tell me she put the order in, she also mentioned that Nathan hadn't been seen since June 2010, so it was time he had a physical as well. So I scheduled that for the first available time--Friday, May 4 at 2:30. This reminded me that the only reason he went to the doctor then was to get a physical to play football, and Luke didn't play football that year or in that league ever--so Luke must not have been seen since 2008. Hmmm . . . looks like I need to make another appointment sometime!
Next week I will once again become very familiar with that drive to Bethesda because I'll be going not just once for Nathan on Friday, but actually 3 days in a row! I have my initial OB appointment on Wednesday at 10:00, and then I have well-child appointments for Micah and Anna on Thursday at 11:00 and 11:30. Ah, fun--I live for the parking garages. Ha!
One good thing Nathan and I accomplished this afternoon while at Bethesda was changing Anna's primary care manager. When I called to schedule the appointments for Anna and Micah several weeks ago now, the scheduler had a really hard time finding 2 close together for us. This was because, as she told me, not all my kids had the same primary care doctor. I found out today that the ONLY child of mine who had a different doctor was Anna. What in the world?! I had assumed it was Micah! Why would she get put with another doctor? And not just any other doctor--a doctor who wasn't even on the same team as the doctor for everyone else, which was why it was near impossible to get appointments back-to-back. Government healthcare--I'm telling you, it's probably not going to be what you think it will be . . . (cue ominous music . . .) But it's still cheap, especially for our big family, so we persevere through the idiocies. And this idiocy was fairly painlessly corrected by filling out a raft of Tricare forms to change Anna's PCM.
So we're back in the drive-to-Bethesda routine. I will say that parking is a lot nicer this pregnancy than with Micah, now that the other parking garage is open. But I did not miss the drive these past few months!!
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