Just call us the Nelson Infirmary...

I can't believe I actually used to question whether or not we should bother using David's medical benefits flex plan from work--you know that account where they take out pre-taxed money into an account for medical expenses throughout the year. I was always worried we wouldn't use all that we took out of his paycheck and then the money would be lost. He always told me with a young child we would certainly use it all up. I should have listened. The past 7 days, my house has been nothing but an infirmary. We have probably used every cent in that flex plan for the year already and Cigna is probably wondering what on earth we have going on in our household with all the claims they must be getting. Just since this past Sunday there have been two adult visits to Urgent Care and a pediatrician appointment. There have been at least 10 prescriptions filled that I can remember including various antibiotics, inhalers, cough medications, antibiotic ear drops, antibiotic eye drops, you name it. And, let's not forget the countless over-the-counter pharmaceutical purchases including all the OTC cold medicines that we dutifully tried first, all the sinus and allergy drugs we could get our hands on, the nose sprays, the cough drops, cough syrups, pink eye relief, vapor pads for the vaporizer, lysol and antibacterial wipes, airborne, probiotics for the antibiotics...the list could go on, I think you get the idea. The pharmacists at Rite Aid actually know the make and model of my car because as soon as I drive up in the drive-thru they hand me my medication and say "Here you go Mrs Nelson". Ive spent way more time conversing with physicians and pharmacists than any other adults in the past 2 weeks. How did we come to this you might ask? Really bad luck. There's nothing worse than 2 sick parents trying to take care of a sick child, especially when trying to be grown-up and honor all of our previous responsibilities such as work, work travel, church obligations, family obligations, etc. In hind site I wish we had just put up a "Quarantined" sign on our front door, pulled the shades, locked the doors and gone into a 2 week long hibernation. The entire ordeal started about 3 weeks ago when all the kids in Noah's playgroup caught a cold. He then shared it with us. IT sucked, it was a typical cold, but nothing much more. We thought we were over it within a few days but we never fully kicked it and by this week it had turned into full blown bronchitis and sinusitis in all of us. In addition poor Noah has a double ear infection and tonsilitis. The poor kid had green crud oozing from every orifice on his head (eyes, ears and nose). No one really wanted to come near him at the pediatrician's office. He was labeled "the oozing kid". After weeks of attempting to put drops in his eyes, drops in his ears, suctioning out his nose, giving him all the antibiotics and now the pro-biotics, the poor kid is traumatized and runs from us whenever we come near him. I used to think there could be nothing harder than giving medicine to a cat...well, this 18-month old is a big contender in winning that label. Our only goal now is to get better before Sunday which is when we leave on our much anticipated (and MUCH needed) week-long family vacation at Seagrove Beach. I am looking into getting an anti-bacterial bomb to go off in our house while we are gone. I think we're going to have to drive David's pick-up truck just so we can haul or huge medicine cabinet with us...