Is This Gonna Hurt?

Turns out Tyler has strep throat--see, I told ya he was sick.

So I've only been back in Texas, what? Four months? Pppfffft. That's not enough time to get all the furniture in place (don't remind me), let alone settle on a pediatrician (or general practitioner, or dentist, for that matter, and I believe I said don't remind me).

As most of my five readers know, I don't take my kids to the doctor unless there are copious amounts of blood involved or death seems imminent. Okay, that sounds a little harsh and over the top but honestly, I have more of a wait-and-see type of personality. (Perhaps that's how I developed walking pneumonia without realizing it. Anyhoo.)

But intuition told me that Tyler needed some type of medical intervention this time. As a matter of fact (and I'll admit I found this pretty bogus), Randy researched Tyler's symptoms online Sunday night and discovered that we should have taken him to the ER, like, a week ago. He's been complaining of the throat pain for at least that long. But according to the website he chose to believe, high fever accompanied by a headache should be treated immediately. Oh well. Tyler is a walking miracle, ladies and gentlemen!!!

Since we have not yet settled on a family physician, I called my friend T and asked her for the nearest walk-in clinic. And I was then introduced to quite a nifty way to deal with walk-in clinics. All I had to do was surf to the clinic's main website, choose which location we were nearest, input your standard data (name, address, insurance info, favorite rock band in college, where you can see yourself in five years, that sort of trivial stuff), and leave a call-back number. Then all that was left was to sit back and wait. I received a call from the clinic that they had gotten my online registration info, and they said they would call back as soon as a room was available. Sweet! No waiting for what could be hours in a waiting room populated with MORE sick people!

About two hours later I got "the call," and we hopped in the car and rushed right over. And since I had already provided my insurance info online, all that was needed was a photocopy of my insurance card. When the receptionist gave my card back, she indicated that our deductible had not yet been met for the year so this would be, and I quote, "a paid-in-full visit."

Tyler, who was sitting about 12 feet away but sweating profusely (a combination of fear and fever), grabbed my arm when I sat down and, through gritted teeth (it hurts to swallow, you know) whimpered, "Did she say this was going to be a painful visit?"