Health stuff

As would be expected for any insurance-less family, we've been a bit concerned about medical bills lately. My friend Michelle told me about a Health Fair down in Provo yesterday so Brent and I went to see if they could help us.

Besides the fact that almost everyone attending was Mexican, it was extremely crowded, and it was about 20 degrees too hot in the main room, there was some good information.

We went first to the Chip booth. I can't remember what Chip stands for, but it's essentially children's insurance for low-income families (i.e. when they can't afford real insurance - similar to medicaid). When we talked to the sweaty guy behind the table, he gave us what information he could and we left feeling like there was no way we'd be covered. We stopped by a booth asking for information about immunizations and the guy from the Chip table found us again and said there was a $50 drawing we should enter before we left.

Our next stop was to the immunization room. For the health fair, the cost went down to $5 per shot, but we didn't have any kind of health record for Felix so we decided to come back some other time. Regular cost? $12 per shot. Still pretty cheap, considering a doctor's visit costs around $50 not counting the shot.

While talking to the nurse about which shots Felix might need, we discovered he was very wet, so when we left, I took Felix to the bathroom to change him and Brent went back to the Chip table to enter the drawing. Apparently, the guy we had talked to had been thinking about us and he realized that there is a 40% reduction in income calculation when the income comes from self-employment. In other words, since our income is over the limit to qualify for Chip, but the huge majority of that income is self-employment, it counts as less and we do qualify.

Not only that, but they actually go back 3 months, which means that we can get at least some coverage for Felix for all his medical stuff since he was dropped off Medicaid when he turned 1. Hooray!!!!!!!


So that's the big (happy) news. There is always stuff going on, but that's one that takes a huge load off my chest at the moment. Last Saturday my niece was baptized. It was nice. That's the second baptism I've attended in the past month (the first was my cousin's son).

One last thing. I'm sick again. Dang it. I just have a terrible chest cold. I can feel the rattling when I breathe deeply and I'm coughing tons. I've now had an awful headache for 2+ days. The coughing is keeping me up late (well, to be fair, I had a girls night at a friend's house last night and didn't come home till about 3:30, but then I stayed up coughing for another half hour at least) and it's waking me up early. I'm sure the low-quality sleep isn't helping the headache at all. I can deal with a cough and a headache though. Hopefully no more hospital stays for the foreseeable future. Cross your fingers for us, won't you?