Yesterday I took William to the doctor for his fourth scheduled transfusion. I was happy to hear from JT that on Wednesday, William cried very little from the IV. Fortunately the same occurred today… when his nurse M. entered the room, William did cry a bit, but relaxed a great deal after I gave him a Dum Dum sucker. Bribery with candy is essential. M. only had to poke William once with the needle and she easily put the IV in his left arm. This was a complete 180 from last month and mom was happy.

William had a brief nap while the saline was hooked up to his IV. This drastically reduced the crankiness later in the afternoon.

This time T. removed the blood; she took out 80 mL like M. did last month. Unlike last month, this time William was very friendly and willing to let T. do her job and help him.

Transfusion day is already a long day, but what made the day even longer was that I William and I took the bus to my job to pick up some information and then we stopped at the Health Fair. The Health Fair was only being offered on my day off… yesterday. I felt that it was important to stop at the Health Fair because there are many upcoming changes in our insurance providers for federal employees.

The bag of pamphlets and trinkets from the insurance providers was too heavy to carry on the bus, so I put my name on it and left it at work and then take it home later. I am extremely disappointed with my health care provider because they are increasing not only the cost of co-payments and medicines, but they are also charging an admittance fee of $200.00 and up, which means if William is admitted to the hospital, that is $200.00 out of pocket for my family. A big change from not having to pay anything at all.

I need to do some lobbying in Washington D.C. or something. I also need to do more research about OPM’s role in what health insurance providers can and cannot do to federal employee plans.

This afternoon, JT and I went searching for a used mini-van to purchase. They were out of our price range, so hopefully we will have some luck by checking out the cars instead of mini-vans.

That is all for now.

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