Foreshadowing

Remind me NEVER to assume any day will be normal. EVER AGAIN.

My blithe little post yesterday morning celebrating a somewhat normal day was definitely foreshadowing for what was to come. And what came was a day filled with frustration, big and little, mundane and dire.

If the United States of America's healthcare system worked like the rest of the world's industrialized countries, insurance companies wouldn't be practicing medicine. One Humana employee determined that the test my husband has to get next week, which had been scheduled by A NURSE at the direction of A DOCTOR (both highly trained and multi-degreed health care professionals), had to be rescheduled for two days later or they wouldn't pay for it.

Because of that one decision, two other doctor's appointments had to be rescheduled (one of them twice), and our hotel reservations had to be changed and an additional day added. And that's just on our end. We have no idea how that rescheduled procedure affected anyone else in the system. Did another patient get bumped from the list? Will the operating room staff be required to work overtime? The ripple effect is real, y'all.

All in all, we either took or made about 30 phone calls yesterday. 

I thought all of it might be moot if my husband had a stroke while we were trying to get it all straightened out. 

The dust has settled, but the frustration has not. America needs to implement a universal healthcare system. Period. We won't benefit personally, but our children might and our grandchildren will. And they deserve better than what we've dealt with for the past 24 hours.

Stress-induced overeating did not happen, thankfully. 

But it could have. I have no idea what today's challenges will be. I just know there will be some. May I handle them with some semblance of grace.

Thanks for reading.