Saturday, November 5, 2011

30 Days of Thanks: Day 5

Day 5: So thankful for access to medical care

Nearly 2 years ago I had an abscessed tooth.
If you have ever had one of those,
you are cringing right now in sympathetic pain.

It was without a doubt WAY worse than labor pain.
It did not end, there was no pain killer that would make it go away.
Drugs with narcotics... nope. Still there.
I wanted to take a hammer and whack the tooth out of my mouth.
I didn't...
but I wanted to.
It was (of course...) on a weekend 
when my parents (with the dental office) were out of town. 
Monday arrived, and a friend came and drove my chipmunk-cheeked self 
to the dentist where I have NEVER been so thankful 
for a syringe-wielding dentist in my LIFE.

Also recently, my hubby has had to work through an illness.
It's the typical coughing mess that's going around, 
but for him... it got worse and he needed a prescription and an inhaler 
so he could talk and breathe at the same time. 
It took 5 minutes to get an appointment, 4 minutes to drive to the office,
and 30 minutes later, he had 2 rx's in hand. 
We dropped them off at the pharmacy less than 3 miles away 
and had his medications shortly after that. 

When I consider that one of our sweet baby girls 
has latent malaria and I think about how
she must have suffered...
about how she witnessed the death of family members
who died from (likely) the same disease
that is completely preventable with cheap pills
and treatable with cheap antibiotics...
it makes me so angry and sad.

We are so blessed that we have the ability to complain
about our insurance costs, our treatment options, or the price of our co-pays.

And I, for one, am thankful to have these medical resources at my fingertips!


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