Well things are going much better 1 week after our trauma. Jenna is pretty much recovering, she's still a little tired (but she was pretty much tired all the time anyway with three crazy little girls running around the house). We mostly were able to hold down the fort and keep things relatively tidy around here. We had some help with the girls being watched by people. The hardest part about that is that everyone wants to take 1 or 2 of the girls and watch them for us, which is a huge help, but it's really hard on them. They want/need to be around mom (and i believe me as well) and they need eachother. When they come back from being split up and away from us there is a lot of re-adjusting that has to take place and that can be so stressful and frustrating sometimes it almost doesn't even feel like it was worth it to have them sent away. That being said please if you are one of the people that we let Abby or Olivia go away with from time to time, continue to offer and we will continue to say yes, after all i did say almost.
So the good news, I spend the day at the department of health and social services in Bellingham yesterday (and i do mean the whole day) working through various applications for aid and medical care. I was able to show them our outstanding loans, our lack of money in bank accounts etc.... that combined with the medical bill qualified us for TANF (temporary assistance to needy families) in which they authorized medical care for 3 months for Jenna and the girls. This is huge because there is a funky little way that the state health care works in that care always starts on the first of a month until the 31st (or last day) of the month.
What that means is because I waited around and did all the applications and interviews yesterday (Feb 25th) they were able to process and approve our assistance yesterday. Which means that they retroactively give us coverage from February 1st, which means that Jenna is going to be insured for the hospitalization.
We want to thank everyone for their prayers, thoughts, and gifts that they sent to help us. And specifically those who donated to help us with our medical bills, we will be able to cover most of the expenses now, obviously things are still very tight for us since the only way to qualify for TANF is if your expenses will bring your entire combined assets below $1,000. which is where we currently are right now. My job starts on Monday, which will help and we trust that God will continue to provide what we need (not everything we want). We want to again thanks everyone for their help but also there were many people who gave donations to us when we believed there was not going to be any type of coverage, i know many of you gave generously and someof you may not have had the money to spare and I want to return/pay back anyone that needs that money returned.
It's a tough position because we can really use the help and are appreciative, yet at the same time we do not want anyone to feel like they can't ask us to return their donation since our bills are more normalized now than we originally thought. Please let me know i believe that through the paypal site i can issue refunds within the next month or so, and it will happen automatically, please do not feel bad about asking for anything back. We appreciate your love and concern,
Gratefully yours,
Billy
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Insurance
Well insurance rules my life right now. Not only have i had a career in insurance for the last 2 years (supplemental not major medical) but now we have this un-insured situation due to my recent job change. Basically Combined, the company i worked for the since early 2009 and left in November for various reasons offered me my old job back. I accepted, since many of the reasons leading up to my resignation had changed making the situation better. The only problem was that their medical benefits are run through a 3rd party vendor, and that company does not allow immediate re-instatement of medical insurance, and there were going to be at least 60 days that i would not be able to have any medical coverage. Because i had only been working for Sterling Insurance for 88 days we were not able to get any coverage through them, or through COBRA either. This left us stuck with no insurance and not able to get any insurance for our family for the next 2 months. We applied for and were approved to purchase DSHS coverage for the girls for $40/mo each and have them covered which was the most important thing. Jenna was obviously the next thing to figure out because she was 12 weeks pregnant. We applied on Feb 1st for pregnancy medical coverage for her, and our application was still pending when her miscarraige happened.
We are still in the process of collecting the forms declaring what I am expected to make, and showing our bank accounts, records, and tax returns to DSHS for coverage.
The situation is such that we will most likely not be approved because i am not on unemployment, because Jenna is married and not a single mother, and because we cannot be classified as a "minority group." which would all help qualify us for her to get coverage.
It's still possible that our application gets approved, however it is unlikely that even if they approve us that they will back-date coverage to the day that we first applied and cover the hospitalization and surgery retro-actively. Most likely they will only approve coverage from the day that the application was approved, which is pointless and useless since Jenna is no longer pregnant now...
We're still hopefull, but in the meantime Candice Clem (my sister in law) has helped set up this fund where people can help us out with the incoming medical bills over the next few months. I've been overwhelmed at how quickly funds have started to come in and really appreciate it. I do not ask people to give, but many people have asked how they can help, and this is a huge way you can help.
We will not touch any of this money until we recieve both the medical bills from the hospital, and a final verdict from DSHS on what (if any) amount they will cover if we get coverage. In the event that we get coverage we will offer to either refund the donations as best as we can through the paypal website which tracks the donors and give a refund option, or if people give anonymously and we cannot refund them in the even t we are covered and paid for we will give whatever additional money has been donated to either someone else we know who is uninsured in a similar situation or to Mars Hill Church, where many of the people who have started to donate to us attend.
Thanks again for your help
here's the link...http://apps.facebook.com/fundrazr/activity/5ce65c12b121420ca0932e85cc5deb11?share=true
thanks again for your prayers and support,
Billy
We are still in the process of collecting the forms declaring what I am expected to make, and showing our bank accounts, records, and tax returns to DSHS for coverage.
The situation is such that we will most likely not be approved because i am not on unemployment, because Jenna is married and not a single mother, and because we cannot be classified as a "minority group." which would all help qualify us for her to get coverage.
It's still possible that our application gets approved, however it is unlikely that even if they approve us that they will back-date coverage to the day that we first applied and cover the hospitalization and surgery retro-actively. Most likely they will only approve coverage from the day that the application was approved, which is pointless and useless since Jenna is no longer pregnant now...
We're still hopefull, but in the meantime Candice Clem (my sister in law) has helped set up this fund where people can help us out with the incoming medical bills over the next few months. I've been overwhelmed at how quickly funds have started to come in and really appreciate it. I do not ask people to give, but many people have asked how they can help, and this is a huge way you can help.
We will not touch any of this money until we recieve both the medical bills from the hospital, and a final verdict from DSHS on what (if any) amount they will cover if we get coverage. In the event that we get coverage we will offer to either refund the donations as best as we can through the paypal website which tracks the donors and give a refund option, or if people give anonymously and we cannot refund them in the even t we are covered and paid for we will give whatever additional money has been donated to either someone else we know who is uninsured in a similar situation or to Mars Hill Church, where many of the people who have started to donate to us attend.
Thanks again for your help
here's the link...http://apps.facebook.com/fundrazr/activity/5ce65c12b121420ca0932e85cc5deb11?share=true
thanks again for your prayers and support,
Billy
Monday, February 21, 2011
More facts
So as inevitably seems to happen there were complications with life that altered my schedule and did not allow for me to wax philosophically about my experiences of the last few days. Though my experiences over the last few days have grown and continues, my ability to think and even function is being called seriously into jeopardy here.
Last time i posted Jenna was recovering from surgery....
everything seemed to be going fine they said that all went well and that she would need to rest for an hour and then if she could keep down fluids and walk to the bathroom they would be able to send her home .
fast forward 59 minutes and she is looking good, talking, keeping down some cranberry juice, and about to take the journey to the bathroom.
She walked down the hall with a little help from the tiny nurse (by tiny i mean probably when she lies to make herself taller she claims to be 5'5'') and she goes into the bathroom. The nurse needed to clean off the seat so Jenna is standing there waiting to sit down and begins to feel pretty light headed.... this is most likely because she lost about 3 pints of blood, and to my knowlege you only have about 5.
she's had 2 liter's of iv fluid put into her veigns over the past 3 hours so she has the illusion of being ok but her blood count (or whatever indicates your blood levels) had dropped 50% so her body went into shock. She blacked out in the BR and they called for me and they called for an emergency responder. Well i get in there and she's ok and they run a stretcher over to the door of the bathroom and we're trying to get her to walk to the stretcher.
She has her arms around my neck and we are facing eachother in a hugging position and walking (shuffling really, like a middle school slow dance) towards the stretcher. We get a couple of steps closer and she completely passes out again and is dead weight in my arms. The nurse can't do anything and the emergency responder has not responded to this emergency. I had to catch her and lift her into the stretcher.... which was extremely difficult because of my medical condition known as being a weakling....
adrenaline helps, and i get her into the bed. At this point her blood pressure drops so low that they won't let me look at the screen and turn the monitor tha ti'm looking at off so that we won't panic. Finally an ICU team gets there, and they push .5 liters of iv fluid into her veign in about 30 seconds to stabalize the blood pressure.
she is concious again at this point and sort of crying a bit just from shock. We all might have been, i'm kinda fuzzy on the details around that point. Anyway, we get back to semi-normal status over the next half-hour and the doctor who does the surgery comes back and checks on her. It's going to be an overnight for sure at this point and the transfer her to observation where she stays the night.
I was able to get home and check on the kids for a bit (thanks Dan and Helen for watching them) and then they went to their cousin's house around 3pm (thanks Jordan and Tricia for watching them). I go back to the hospital with Jenna for a bit, and then around 7 she's going to try to get some sleep and i'm going to try and do the same.
I go home. It was difficult to figure out what i should be doing, hard to sleep, hard to process, hard to do anything. I toss and turn and wander around the house for a bit, tidying up what's left of the chores (which isn't much thanks to Helen and Dan's cleanup party with the girls). And i fall asleep around 11.
6:30 rolls around and Abby is having a meltdown at the cousin's house so i get over there to pick up all the kids. We go get some breakfast and head back home.
Jacquie and Dan show up around 8:30 (thanks for watching them) and i get back to the hospital. They are "getting ready" to discharge and around 10:30 we get out of there and get back home.
Jenna is in bed sleeping now, the girls are starting to normalize a bit, still a lot of whining, fighting, and tired eyes around here, but for now we are recovering and getting things back to where they need to be.
we have had 3 sets of baby sitters (thanks again) and we have meals being brought on Mon (today) Tues, Wed, and Fri. John and Candice are coming to help out with the girls today, Jacquie and Dan are taking Olivia on Wednesday and Thursday. And Abby will probably go spend a night or two with Helen and Dan, or Mary later this week as well.
Lindsey and Josh are coming on Sunday and going to help out for 3 days or so next week when i have to go back to work.
So for now things are going along...
things you can pray for...
1) no infections
2) rest
3) peace for the girls, and some patience for the rest of us.
and 4) That we would figure out a way to pay for all of this because I am switching jobs right now and had these last 3 weeks off which leaves us unisured for this incredibly expensive incident. Hopefully we will be able to get some assitance, and things will start of strong with the new job.
again thanks for all the help and support, i'll try to keep updating here, this is the best way to get information thanks for not flooding the phone lines...
-Billy
Last time i posted Jenna was recovering from surgery....
everything seemed to be going fine they said that all went well and that she would need to rest for an hour and then if she could keep down fluids and walk to the bathroom they would be able to send her home .
fast forward 59 minutes and she is looking good, talking, keeping down some cranberry juice, and about to take the journey to the bathroom.
She walked down the hall with a little help from the tiny nurse (by tiny i mean probably when she lies to make herself taller she claims to be 5'5'') and she goes into the bathroom. The nurse needed to clean off the seat so Jenna is standing there waiting to sit down and begins to feel pretty light headed.... this is most likely because she lost about 3 pints of blood, and to my knowlege you only have about 5.
she's had 2 liter's of iv fluid put into her veigns over the past 3 hours so she has the illusion of being ok but her blood count (or whatever indicates your blood levels) had dropped 50% so her body went into shock. She blacked out in the BR and they called for me and they called for an emergency responder. Well i get in there and she's ok and they run a stretcher over to the door of the bathroom and we're trying to get her to walk to the stretcher.
She has her arms around my neck and we are facing eachother in a hugging position and walking (shuffling really, like a middle school slow dance) towards the stretcher. We get a couple of steps closer and she completely passes out again and is dead weight in my arms. The nurse can't do anything and the emergency responder has not responded to this emergency. I had to catch her and lift her into the stretcher.... which was extremely difficult because of my medical condition known as being a weakling....
adrenaline helps, and i get her into the bed. At this point her blood pressure drops so low that they won't let me look at the screen and turn the monitor tha ti'm looking at off so that we won't panic. Finally an ICU team gets there, and they push .5 liters of iv fluid into her veign in about 30 seconds to stabalize the blood pressure.
she is concious again at this point and sort of crying a bit just from shock. We all might have been, i'm kinda fuzzy on the details around that point. Anyway, we get back to semi-normal status over the next half-hour and the doctor who does the surgery comes back and checks on her. It's going to be an overnight for sure at this point and the transfer her to observation where she stays the night.
I was able to get home and check on the kids for a bit (thanks Dan and Helen for watching them) and then they went to their cousin's house around 3pm (thanks Jordan and Tricia for watching them). I go back to the hospital with Jenna for a bit, and then around 7 she's going to try to get some sleep and i'm going to try and do the same.
I go home. It was difficult to figure out what i should be doing, hard to sleep, hard to process, hard to do anything. I toss and turn and wander around the house for a bit, tidying up what's left of the chores (which isn't much thanks to Helen and Dan's cleanup party with the girls). And i fall asleep around 11.
6:30 rolls around and Abby is having a meltdown at the cousin's house so i get over there to pick up all the kids. We go get some breakfast and head back home.
Jacquie and Dan show up around 8:30 (thanks for watching them) and i get back to the hospital. They are "getting ready" to discharge and around 10:30 we get out of there and get back home.
Jenna is in bed sleeping now, the girls are starting to normalize a bit, still a lot of whining, fighting, and tired eyes around here, but for now we are recovering and getting things back to where they need to be.
we have had 3 sets of baby sitters (thanks again) and we have meals being brought on Mon (today) Tues, Wed, and Fri. John and Candice are coming to help out with the girls today, Jacquie and Dan are taking Olivia on Wednesday and Thursday. And Abby will probably go spend a night or two with Helen and Dan, or Mary later this week as well.
Lindsey and Josh are coming on Sunday and going to help out for 3 days or so next week when i have to go back to work.
So for now things are going along...
things you can pray for...
1) no infections
2) rest
3) peace for the girls, and some patience for the rest of us.
and 4) That we would figure out a way to pay for all of this because I am switching jobs right now and had these last 3 weeks off which leaves us unisured for this incredibly expensive incident. Hopefully we will be able to get some assitance, and things will start of strong with the new job.
again thanks for all the help and support, i'll try to keep updating here, this is the best way to get information thanks for not flooding the phone lines...
-Billy
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Update on Jenna
OK here's the facts... i'll post something more creative and insightful later that deals with emotions and what not but for those of you who have been following my cryptic posts on facebook here's the info.
1) we're 12 weeks pregnant, some of you know this some don't, but this is important information for the rest of what transpired this weekend,
2) On friday night Jenna started to experience some spotting, which is not that rare for a pregnancy but is rather rare for Jenna's pregnancies.
3) Saturday morning Jenna started to experience some significant leg pain and cramping, along with increased bleeding. It was at this point that I was notified that anything was wrong, I was in Tacoma (more details on this will be in the foofier post i'm planning on writing later) and was supposed to be there until Tuesday.
4) I came home yesterday afternoon around 3 and jenna was starting to feel better, she was laying down a lot and the bleeding subsided and the cramps were minor, but reminicent of contractions. (at this point we were pretty prepared for a miscarraige.)
5) This morning (Sunday) around 3am Jenna began to bleed heavily and have serious pain. As we got closer to 5am the bleeding had not stopped and Jenna was starting to get very pale and woozy. At this point we called her dad and step-mom and had them come over to be at our house when the kids woke up so that i could take Jenna to the e.r.
6) Around 630 her blood pressure dropped to 68/42 after she lost a significant amount of blood, about 2 pints in total from 3am till then. This was when the Dr. who was dealing with us told us that he was sure it was a miscarraige, which is rare for 12 weeks into a pregnancy and he told us that we had a couple of options, a) wait and see if the miscarraige completed itself, b) have a dnc (surgery) and clean everything out. He said we could wait to make the decision till 1pm since she ate a granola bar at 5am (my fault) and shouldn't have surgery before 1pm anyway.
7) around 7:15 the Dr performed another pelvic exam, the amount of blood was clearly disturbing to him because he took away our options, and told us we were going to have to do the surgery, and we could not wait until 1pm. He said that in order to avoid a blood transfusion that we needed to get her into surgery as soon as the surgical team was done with a galbladder surgery they were performing.
8) around 7:30 the Dr examined the blood loss again and escalated things along even further and said we could not wait for the surgical team and he was going to call-in the on-call back up surgery team to get in asap and prep her for a dnc.
9) Around 8:30 they got her up to the surgery room and began to prep her for surgery
10) Surgery began around 9:30 after the anestetic was given to her. The surgery took about 33 minutes according to facebook from when i posted that she went in.... everything went well there were no complications.
11) currently she is in recovery, apparently she is doing well, but the bleeding will continue for a bit and until she can stand up or attempt to they still do not know whether or not she will require a blood transfusion.
12) as of now, she will recover for the next hour and then she will be in a room until she can walk, use the restroom, and hold down fluid before they will let her go home. She will most liekly be able to go home this afternoon.
13) the pregnancy had almost finished terminating on it's own when she went into surgery but the surgery was definatly needed because there was tissue and blod clots that needed to be removed.
14) she will need to be laid up for the next week or two and monitored for excessive bleeding or an infection, but beyond that everything else should be fine and she is not in critical condition.
That's it for the facts as they are right now, some thoughts and feeling on the facts will follow shortly when i have more time to write, but i need to be ready because i should be able to go back and see her soon. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers, please no calls or texts right now there just isn't a way to answer them or respond, and I don't want to have to weed through 50 messages later. I'll keep you posted here if you are interested in more details, thanks to everyone for their support....
-Billy
1) we're 12 weeks pregnant, some of you know this some don't, but this is important information for the rest of what transpired this weekend,
2) On friday night Jenna started to experience some spotting, which is not that rare for a pregnancy but is rather rare for Jenna's pregnancies.
3) Saturday morning Jenna started to experience some significant leg pain and cramping, along with increased bleeding. It was at this point that I was notified that anything was wrong, I was in Tacoma (more details on this will be in the foofier post i'm planning on writing later) and was supposed to be there until Tuesday.
4) I came home yesterday afternoon around 3 and jenna was starting to feel better, she was laying down a lot and the bleeding subsided and the cramps were minor, but reminicent of contractions. (at this point we were pretty prepared for a miscarraige.)
5) This morning (Sunday) around 3am Jenna began to bleed heavily and have serious pain. As we got closer to 5am the bleeding had not stopped and Jenna was starting to get very pale and woozy. At this point we called her dad and step-mom and had them come over to be at our house when the kids woke up so that i could take Jenna to the e.r.
6) Around 630 her blood pressure dropped to 68/42 after she lost a significant amount of blood, about 2 pints in total from 3am till then. This was when the Dr. who was dealing with us told us that he was sure it was a miscarraige, which is rare for 12 weeks into a pregnancy and he told us that we had a couple of options, a) wait and see if the miscarraige completed itself, b) have a dnc (surgery) and clean everything out. He said we could wait to make the decision till 1pm since she ate a granola bar at 5am (my fault) and shouldn't have surgery before 1pm anyway.
7) around 7:15 the Dr performed another pelvic exam, the amount of blood was clearly disturbing to him because he took away our options, and told us we were going to have to do the surgery, and we could not wait until 1pm. He said that in order to avoid a blood transfusion that we needed to get her into surgery as soon as the surgical team was done with a galbladder surgery they were performing.
8) around 7:30 the Dr examined the blood loss again and escalated things along even further and said we could not wait for the surgical team and he was going to call-in the on-call back up surgery team to get in asap and prep her for a dnc.
9) Around 8:30 they got her up to the surgery room and began to prep her for surgery
10) Surgery began around 9:30 after the anestetic was given to her. The surgery took about 33 minutes according to facebook from when i posted that she went in.... everything went well there were no complications.
11) currently she is in recovery, apparently she is doing well, but the bleeding will continue for a bit and until she can stand up or attempt to they still do not know whether or not she will require a blood transfusion.
12) as of now, she will recover for the next hour and then she will be in a room until she can walk, use the restroom, and hold down fluid before they will let her go home. She will most liekly be able to go home this afternoon.
13) the pregnancy had almost finished terminating on it's own when she went into surgery but the surgery was definatly needed because there was tissue and blod clots that needed to be removed.
14) she will need to be laid up for the next week or two and monitored for excessive bleeding or an infection, but beyond that everything else should be fine and she is not in critical condition.
That's it for the facts as they are right now, some thoughts and feeling on the facts will follow shortly when i have more time to write, but i need to be ready because i should be able to go back and see her soon. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers, please no calls or texts right now there just isn't a way to answer them or respond, and I don't want to have to weed through 50 messages later. I'll keep you posted here if you are interested in more details, thanks to everyone for their support....
-Billy
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