Today was going pretty well. At least I thought it was. The mailman arrived about 11am this morning but I didn’t go get it until a bit later. When I opened the mail I saw this and my stomach was instantly in knots. It was a bill from Aultman Hospital for Lizze’s surgery. It’s been months and we thought it had actually been covered by insurance. Turns out that was the incorrect assumption.
When I had spoken with Aultman Hospital to set up the surgery that Lizze needed to have done they told me we were looking at $6000. I wasn’t sure how we were going to cover that but Lizze really needed the surgery and so I didn’t feel we really had a choice. Well apparently that was a VERY conservative estimate because as you can see, the bill was $4000 more then we thought it would be. This pretty much doubles the monthly payments. 
I will be giving the hospital a call and figure out what happened and set up the payment arrangement, which will be in the neighborhood of $200-220/month. Deep breathe…..and….BIG sigh.
In response to this I need to figure out something to bring in the extra money. So this is what I think I’m going to do. Lizze and I have been working on something for a little while now. I haven’t finalized anything just yet but I hope to by the end of the week. Lizze has designed a medical binder. Each of the kids have one and it holds ALL their medical, shot and medication records. It’s setup so that we have EVERYTHING we need when we go one of the MANY doctors and therapists appointments. It also works really well in case of an emergency (as can often happen with special needs kids) because it has EVERYTHING the paramedics and emergency room staff will need as far as pertinent medical information goes. We have set this up so everything is organized and easily accessible.
My goal is to begin selling these ASAP. I haven’t finalized the price but once we have everything put together I’ll have that as well.
We have designed these to meet or exceed our 3 Autistic kids needs. If it works for well for everything we have going on it should easily help most families to better manage their child’s medical history.
