I can't figure out Tricare

C, my six-year-old daughter, hasn't been seen by a primary care provider in more than two years. None of my daughters have. We've moved around enough that switching providers has been a huge hassle... let me tell you why.

Since we moved into this house, on the opposite side of town, we wanted to set up a primary care provider (PCP) for them near our house. 

To be seen, I have to switch her PCP before the appointment. That's fine, except that the list of providers Tricare has seems to be severely outdated. Every time I switch providers, then call to make an appointment, it turns out that the doctor Tricare helped me choose either no longer works at the clinic, or isn't a PCP anymore (most recently, the doctor Tricare selected turned out to actually be a neonatal doctor). 

The Children's Hospital said they'd go ahead and make an appointment with one of the doctors that currently take patients at their clinic, but I would have to call Tricare right away and have C's PCP changed to that doctor so her insurance would cover the appointment. That would have worked. I was excited to finally have found the secret door. 

They forwarded me to a nurse to determine how to have C seen, based on my description of the situation. She was very nice and asked useful questions, of course. She said it sounded liked C definitely needed to be evaluated, based on my description  and would need to have a "new patient" appointment, at which the doctor would decide weather or not to referrer her to a specialist. She also said we should be able to get her scheduled for her first appointment in the next week and go from there. 

That would have been satisfying.

But then, when she forwarded me back to the appointment line, the woman who answered informed me that since C hasn't been seen there before, she would need a physical to establish care there. She can't be seen there at all until she has a physical, and the physical has to be at their clinic. Here's the best part: The next time the clinic is doing physicals is September.

Are physicals just incredibly complicated or difficult? Can anyone tell me why I can't get C a physical... just whenever I want? And am I just supposed to wait to have my child seen at all until September, now?

I want to take them off of Tricare and put them on civilian insurance, where they actually know what's going on with their physicians and patients. I've never seen anyone else have this much trouble with their insurance. Sure, I would have run into the same "she needs a physical, but you have to wait until September" problem at the Children's Hospital with any insurance company. At least I could have avoided the run around about which doctors are actually practicing pediatricians.  Unfortunately, the only way I can afford civilian insurance for my kids is to marry Papa... which is in the cards for the future, but "for insurance" is not what I want to think when asked why we decided to finally get married.

So, too frustrated to continue to deal with the problem, I had Papa call around to other clinics and hospitals in the area. He found one that has three practicing pediatricians that accept Tricare and would  be able to make an appointment as soon as next week (when we'll be out of town... but at least it's not September) and wrote down their information. The trouble, now, is that I'm not in control of the girls' insurance, so I have to wait to hear back from their dad. 

I called him at 10:37 this morning, and haven't heard back from him yet (3 hours later). But, I won't hold it against him since it is a work day. I just hope he calls back soon. We're going to be spending a week out of town with Papa's family, starting Saturday. There's no way we can get C's medical stuff taken care of before then, but I'd like to at least get my foot in the door as soon as I can.

Getting Together

For the last week, ending yesterday, my mom, sister, and baby niece were visiting. It had been nearly a year since our last visit, when we dropped the girls off with them (in Texas) before we came back to Colorado for a wedding and then flew to North Carolina for a week to visit with Papa's family. So, I hadn't met my niece and my mom and sister hadn't met the Cub.

This time, they came here and stayed at my house. We spent a lot of time just enjoying each other's company around the house and in the back yard. A trip to the zoo, Good Times Frozen Custard, and a dinner (and drinks... and delicious chocolate cake) out without any kids were also thoroughly enjoyed, though.

We had one of Papa's friends over and played Cards Against Humanity (after the girls were in bed). The next day, Papa and I wound up taking C to the hospital because she was running a 104.1 fever, even with tylenol and ibuprofen, and threw up as soon as she tried to swallow her next dose.

They tested her for meningitis, strep, and UTI before sending us home with no indication that it was anything but a generic virus. She was given Zofran for her vomiting, a nurse waited to make sure she was keeping fluids down, and her cultures were sent out for further testing, so I do believe the children's hospital has done their due diligence. And, as I'm writing this, she hasn't vomited in more than a day, her fever is under control, and she's actually starting to eat a bit of normal food again.

I do hate that she was sick while we had family visiting. On the other hand, I'm glad we had their support when it came to taking C to the hospital. The rest of the kids got to stay home with GG, Aunt T, and their baby niece, NahNah. (I like to refrain from using real names in my blog.) Thanks to them, everyone else got to enjoy the weather and have dinner on time while Papa and I spent a few hours away with C.

I will admit that I totally neglected the house while they were here. I didn't do almost any laundry, vacuuming, or other basic clean up. Preferring to spend time with them, I did as little as was required to get by. Sure, I have a lot of catching up to do, but I only just met my niece (she was born in November), and I hadn't seen my mom or sister since last summer. It is far beyond worth it.

Other news this week: the Cub is transitioning to formula. He's nearly 6 months old and his demand has definitely outgrown my supply. I still breast feed him once or twice a day, and pump milk for his baby cereal.

When I had to stop breast feeding M, I cried. I felt like a failure and I hated her pediatrician for telling me I should start feeding her something else because she wasn't gaining weight as fast as the average baby. This time, though, I made the decision myself because I could tell the Cub wasn't satisfied. This time, I'm confident in my decision and feel that I am doing what is best for him.

Baby Robins

For the last few weeks, we've had an unintended science project going on just outside our back door. Actually, "unintended" might not be quite as accurate as "unwanted".

A mother robin built her nest on top of a large frame Papa had constructed with the intent to build a loft for the kids' playroom. Construction on the loft started with the first bout of warm weather. If you didn't already know, it snowed here a number of times after that, though. It was (and is) only a large rectangle with a cross-beam, leaning against the back wall of our house, but we really wanted to continue working on it when the weather stabilized. 

So, when the nest started appearing up there, we knocked it down. It rematerialized, and we knocked it down again. Of course, we checked for eggs both times. The third time's a charm, I guess, because mother bird managed to lay three eggs in it before we noticed it. 

"Too late, now."

"I guess the loft is going to have to wait."

I did some research on robin nesting behaviors. For anyone who is interested, this page is an excellent resource and will probably provide you with any information you might need. It turns out that robins typically lay four eggs, one per day, over the course of four days. Then, once the brood is complete, mom will start incubating her eggs so they will all hatch at about the same time. 

By the time we found the nest, we were only one egg short.

As you could probably have guessed, there was a fourth egg the next day, and mom robin started spending a lot of time on her nest. She left a lot more often than any of us expected, but only for very short periods. I assume she was leaving only to eat.

Eleven days after we first found the three eggs in the nest, the friday before Memorial Day, we found that three eggs had hatched. We had one, little, blue hold-out. More than a day later, I just assumed that last little guy wasn't going to make it. But then, he hatched over night. 

The wee ones started out looking like silly putty that had collected some lint under the couch. As I'm writing this, only a week later, they're starting to look like lizards with beaks. They change a lot over a very short period of time. They only spend a week or two in the nest, so they have to grow up fast. I just never knew that the early stages of growing feathers would look more like scales. I guess it's an interesting reminder of the evolutionary process that gave us modern birds.

Once her babies were hatched, she became very protective. In the beginning, she would take an adorable aggressive stance whenever I would go out the back door. She seems to have gotten used to us. 

She feeds them whole worms, grubs, and caterpillars, which she sometimes finds in our yard. And, recently, we've witnessed more than one robin protecting and feeding the babies. I assume the second robin is dad. Who wouldn't need some help with four, growing mouths to feed?

I take pictures of them regularly, and I'm putting together a comic book of our experience with the baby robins, for the kids to have. I wonder if this will happen again next year, but if it doesn't, I never want to forget this.