Fun with insurance!

Here is a journal entry from 2/12/11.  Just for the record, I now have Kaiser and am pretty happy with that choice.  Really for California it's kind of the only reasonable choice for maternity unless you're wealthy.

2/12/11

Z sent me an e-mail that she told M (her old boss & mentor) about my plans and that he thought I was “totally brave and cool”.  It’s funny, she’s used the word brave a lot to describe me, but I don’t feel brave…I suppose it is kind of ballsy (I know it’s pretty risky!) but that doesn’t necessarily make me brave, it just means I have my back against a wall and have no other options.  No word from Kaiser. I will call ehealthinsurance next week – it’s all very messy and complicated, because now I’ve been approved for Blue Shield, and they want 30 days written notice before they cancel your policy, and I also have to cancel Anthem, all in the hopes I’ll be approved for Kaiser before I go to India, which is now just a week away.  And if I want to try in March, whatever maternity policy I get I’m going to have to stick with through the whole process.  And don’t forget, Blue Shield, although it is a PPO and means I can choose my own doctors, also means it’s going to cost $7500 to have this baby, which is a bit of a nightmare.  I wish Kaiser would just approve me already so I could get that going and cancel everything else in time!  There is a very good chance I’ll be stuck paying $1000 for health insurance next month to cover all these policies.  If I would stop being so stubborn, I would just pass on trying in March, cancel everything, and wait until April.  It’s definitely worth thinking about, especially with my ovulation so bizarre this month (it looks like I may have ovulated on Thurs, which is way early, and there’s been no real temp spike, so this month has been impossible to read – and this was supposed to be the easy one!).  There are a few deciding factors still – one, what happens in the gyn office Monday.  A few things could happen – the best would be if she just signed off on my health form right there and said “have at it”.  But she may want to wait for results of the PAP, etc, and there may be the blood in the urine issue and wanting to check that out, which would involve other doctor visits, waiting for tests, possible treatments, etc.  Could be nothing, or could be a HUGE inconvenience that could set me back months.  So I have to get past the gyn hurdle.  Then I have to figure out (clinic)’ policy with regards to pulling samples and then not using them – after all, if they charge me to pull everything and then not use it until April, I may consider hedging my bets and just waiting.  After all, right now the odds are very good I’ll be ovulating in Y, and who knows what condition I’ll be in when I get back from India – what if I’m sick, what if I don’t ovulate or ovulate at some weird, unpredictable time?  I don’t know why but I just hate the thought of putting it off another month, I’ll pretty much do everything to make sure that doesn’t happen.  I think it’s because I’m stubborn, because I said I’d start in March and that’s when I want to start, dammit, even with everything right now telling me that’s a really dumb choice.  Again, I’m totally dependent on the insurance issues, what the gyn says, what (clinic) says about false starts, and then what my body decides to do in India.  So that’s a lot to get through before being able to start.  Far from ideal, for sure. 

I just wish you had more than this tiny 12 hour window to make it happen.  That’s so scary to me.  If only you had two or three days!  This month, for example, the ovulation could have happened Thurs or Fri, it’s impossible to tell because the monitor said three bars for those two days, and the temp was equally low both days, and then there was no real spike today.  If I could have just those two days to mess around then I wouldn’t worry.  We’ll see where my temps go the rest of the week.  Then once I’m in India I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to continue to temp.  I may just stop it entirely since I don’t think any post-O temps past the first week really matter anyway.

Read a neat article today about a choice mom of two who says even though she technically is alone and went through the process alone, she is now never alone; she has her kids.  I hate to admit I’ve thought about this a lot lately, all these cold winter nights alone in my dark little house – how once the kid(s) is(are) here, I’ll never be alone again, and how good that will be, to always have company.  I hate to admit it because again, I don’t want to devalue the life I have now (and may be stuck with if I can’t get pregnant), but that thought really appeals to me.  And it’s not like I’ll never have alone time – the kid will nap, go to bed earlier than me, etc.  So it’s not like I’ll never have a quiet moment to read or watch an adult TV show again.  But I do love the idea of this house being shared – of kids to swim in the pool, cook for, do renovations for.  It is nice to think of living for someone other than yourself, after you’ve had a whole adult life of just living selfishly.  It gets really old after a while.  I wouldn’t have said this five years ago, but I can say it now, at nearly 39.  Living alone and just for yourself and your own pleasure all the time is really boring, mainly because everyone around you gets married and has families, so you’re constantly surrounded by kids and nobody your own age can come out and play anymore.  I can’t wait to fill my empty hours with stuff for the kids – day trips, gatherings with the other moms, hikes with the kid, beach trips with the kid, etc etc.  I imagine my life will be a lot fuller with one or more kids – I won’t be so bored and filling time all the time.  I really look forward to that!