Thank God that we have excellent health insurance.  Of course it is changing in January (not quite so excellent but still very good).  I had to go to the ER two weeks ago and my 2.5 hour visit was billed to our insurance company in the amount of $10477.00.  Of that, after the insurance company's "adjustments", they amount paid to the hospital was $2361.35.  Quite a difference.  Fifty-five percent of the bill was for a CT scan!

The ER visit was during a lull in the illness that swept through the family.  Dex and Cars had the fever/sore throat/cough and the day Dex was better and I sent him the school was when I got violently ill with a raging bacterial infection resulting in an inflamed colon (and and blood loss).  The ER doc got excited that I might be patient 1 of a new E. coli outbreak but no pathogens were found and a huge dose of antibiotics and three days of bedrest had me good to go.  Of course on the 3rd day of bedrest, DH came down with the same sickness that Dex and Cars had and he was out of commission for three days (two of them work days!!).

The month of October was a write-off and while I was happy to have lost 10 pounds in 3 days, I have gained back 5 of them already.  I am fortunate that neither Jax nor I did not get the high fever illness.  So far November has been a healthy month for us!

One funny thing about the whole situation was that when I got to the ER they said I was in their system but no information on why.  The ER doctor was puzzled and said "I see that you are in here and it says I treated you in the ER in 2010 but there is no information".  I reminded him that I was the "bat family" that had come in two years before and were sent to the regional trauma hospital for "treatment" since the rabies vaccine was only available there.  We had a bit of a chuckle then he told me that they county had changed things and this hospital now had the vaccine (not that we will ever have a need for it).  Anyway, you can read the post here (I wrote it but never published it until tonight:  http://pezblahg.blogspot.com/2012/11/if-you-find-dying-bat.html)