This evening...

This afternoon I got Georgia from the sitter's and upon Jenn's report decided I better call the doctor. If nothing else, I wanted to hear if there was more we should be doing on day 10 or 11 of her cold. Humidifer...check...Tylenol...check...raised her bed...check...watching her hydration...check. But also to ask if she might have developed an ear infection from the cold. Of course, I already knew the answer and was headed there.

We are fortunate to have a group of peds in a family practice with late hours and also an urgent care that our insurance bills only as a regular visit. For $5 co-pay, a definite answer was worth it.

She does. Poor girl. Sick on her birthday week.

Noah was headed out to pick up her script. I called to make sure it was ready and how much it would cost just so he had enough cash in hand. The tech asked me if we had insurance and upon a second look she saw our insurance had denied to cover the script. In other words, the $139 super antibiotic prescribed (since it's been only 2 months since double ear infections) is a bit over the top. I don't always agree with insurance, but given that I was also told it was optional to treat her infection with drugs I just cannot bring myself to fork over $139. I'm waiting for the pharmacy to get in touch with doctor.

I may regret it in the middle of the night and I may have to make a trip to Walgreens in the middle of the night, but given Georgia has a high pain tolerance (proven several times over) and the fact I didn't birth her in fear so I'm not going to raise her in fear, I am waiting for a more reasonable option to be given.

I'll just add that the context of all this is President Obama's speech tonight. We watched it while eating dinner. (Georgia clapped for him several times--very sweet!) This is a recession! I don't wish to stimulate the economy by purchasing fancy drugs when plain ones will do! We live by a budget and the Dave Ramsey-ite in me is going to insist that if we break our budgeted $20 for medical bills and another $20 for Rx (break down: with insurance, that would cover 4 visits and 2 Rx's) it better be THE BEST OPTION!

UPDATE: Walgreens just called. Her new script is ready. It is $5. That's a mere 3.6% of the first one :~)