Me and my big mouth... (& Happy GratiTuesday!)

In my last post I was rejoicing about the kids' good health and hoping I didn't jinx them. Me and my big mouth.

As I've mentioned before, our health insurance has a ridiculously high deductible which makes us less apt to go to the doctor on a whim. Well...here's the sequence of events that's occurred since then:

• I've been experiencing shortness of breath for a few months, and decided to go to the doctor to see if maybe an allergy medication would help clear it up. The doctor ran a quick blood test to see if anything alarming popped up, and my clotting factor was high enough to indicate a possible blood clot in my lung. (What?!?) They took me for a CT scan which (praise God!) didn't show a clot. I've also had a respiratory analysis (scored great on that) and an echocardiogram (waiting on results) since then. Our checkbook ran screaming from my purse at the mention of "CT scan" and I STILL don't have a prescription for allergy medicine (growl...).
• Sunday night Blake took a tumble off of a kitchen chair and wouldn't stop crying. He just wanted me to hold him and he was holding his arm tightly between us. I determined that his pain was in his shoulder, and thank God Brent was getting off work shortly. I took him to the ER where they determined his collarbone was completely broken in two pieces (ouch, ouch, ouch--poor child!!!). They put him in a sling and finally let us go home 4 long hours later with an appointment to see a specialist first thing the next morning. (At this point, the checkbook applied for a passport and left a note saying "You're on your own. I'm outta here.")

The orthopedist wants to see Blake back in a week, and said that it would be 6-8 weeks before he felt back to normal. Poor little guy!! He just wants to be held, and is naturally fearful when anyone gets too close to him...especially Graham and Sophie. Have you ever seen kittens play? How they lay in wait for an innocent littermate to walk by to pounce on? That's how these 3 play. Blake constantly scans the room so the whereabouts of Graham and Sophie are concretely on his radar.

On the light side, though, the trip to the orthopedist had a couple of funny moments. The nurse told Blake she'd bring him a book that had lots of colorful pictures, and she came back into the room with the "Encyclopedia of Spiders." (Who knew there was such a book?! And how did it enter the life of the most arachnophobic person on Earth?!) Then when the doctor was discussing the treatment options, Blake let out the longest (...ahem...) TOOT ever heard. The doctor actually stopped mid-sentence and waited to continue. I turned a dark shade of crimson and wanted to die.

Now for our GratiTuesday highlights!

1. We're grateful that we have insurance at all. We can slowly bite off paying the $4,000 deductible--I know there are a lot of people who are saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical expenses, and I know we are very lucky.
2. I'm grateful that Brent wasn't with us at the orthopedist appointment, because he would have been in a full-fledged howling-with-laughter frenzy at Blake's tooting episode, and I might have died of embarrassment.
3. We're grateful that we've found great babysitters so the kids are at home while we work--I can't imagine leaving Blake somewhere at a time like this. I love that he can be in the comfort of his own home while he heals.

I'll have more updates on Blake during the week! Please pray for his comfort and healing.