Hellllooooo Health Insurance!

I have never not had health insurance, until this last year. The year that Chris and I both needed it the most.

Growing up, my dad always made sure that my family had health insurance. I never realized how expensive it probably was with having as large of a family as we had.

I also never realized that it doesn't matter how much the monthly deduction from your paycheck is (large or small), if you use the hospitalization once, it's worth every.single.penny.

I purchased health insurance through my previous employer for the two years that I worked there. It was good because just as I wasn't covered under my dad's policy, I had my own. Then all of a sudden they decided to take my health benefits away, give me a pay cut, and take away my paid vacation, and I decided to get the hell out of dodge. The day I quit, there was no insurance to be had for me.

That day was April 16, 2009.

Chris on the other hand is a different story. Last year when he worked for the contract company, he didn't have insurance. Not because he didn't sign up for it, but because some brilliant soul on their side "lost the paperwork."

The one year that he needs insurance the most, he doesn't have it. Now we are nearly $100,000 in debt because of the diagnosis.

Now, I'm not too bitter about the debt if only because it was worth it. But it has been hard. We had to move out of our apartment, and basically give up our space/privacy. We also had to get rid of his car because it died, and we didn't have money to fix it.

Anyway, getting to the point- Along with Chris' awesome new job, came some awesome health benefits! Heck yes, the cards came in the mail Tuesday!

And, news flash!! Chris must be in this with me for the long haul because I'm getting benefits as well.

Ah, love.

The best thing is when Chris goes to his next check-up in July,  he will be able to hand them an insurance card instead of asking them about payment plans!

It's baby steps people.

The Offer

Good things come to those who wait. No, seriously. Ask Chris, he knows first hand. Thursday afternoon he was called to come pick this up-

Of course, the good stuff was what was inside-

Yep, after being unemployed taking a vacation for three weeks, he finally got The Offer.

Here's how it worked out:

April 26th- Apply for job online, while working his last week at Volt.

April 30th- Contract job with Volt is over= unemployed as of today.

May 7th- Interview!

May 13th- Consent to background check (pass it and get the job!)

May 20th- The Offer!

May 21st- Offer accepted! (Duh!)

May 24th- First day back at work.

It's been a crazy month. He will be doing the same job he was doing previously, but now he is an actual employee of Apple. No contracts. He even has the same boss. That's not even the best thing. The best thing is benefits- says we who are about $70,000 in debt thanks to those medical bills!

Big sigh of relief.  The other best part? He actually likes his job. He knows this already because he's been doing it for the last year. Ya know, minus the last three weeks of unemployment vacation.

He always reads the fine print-

He is like a kid at Christmas right now.

He deserves it.

 

Why Wait?

Some of you are probably wondering why we waited so long to get Chris to a doctor. Like I said, we noticed something wasn't right about a month and a half before we did anything about it. The first reason was denial. I feel like we both knew what was going on (and hoped it would just go away) and that made the second reason even worse.

Chris doesn't have medical insurance.

It's a long story, and I'm not going into detail on here, but that's the gist of it. He should have it, but papers got lost in the shuffle (not on his end) and now he's got cancer and no insurance.

Did I mention I don't have a job right now either?

So, we bit the bullet and took him to the emergency room. I can't live without him ya know? Whatever the cost, he needs to get better! Needless to say we are struggling. We have family helping us out in all different ways but we still worry about it. Last night, I was worrying about money and doctor bills and life but Chris totally talked me out of that funk. He's good at that. We'll be fine, we just have a lot of prioritizing and money shuffling to do!

Chris went back to work about a week ago. How does that make me feel? Like total crap. There he is working and here I am sitting on my butt writing a blog. I guess it's guilt? I don't know, but I do wish I could go back to school (not happening now) instead, I'll probably end up with another crappy job just to pay the bills. That's a whole 'nother post.

Chris loves his job and I'm hoping that he gets to keep it. Of course he will! He's so strong! He needs it for his sanity. Dr K., his oncologist, said that he has the best possible job to have while going through chemotherapy. He sits at a desk and helps all of you people who call with questions/problems with your iPhones (he works for a contract company so not exactly for Apple otherwise I'm sure he'd have insurance). In fact, Dr. K. told Chris not to quit, or take a lot of time off, because that would be very unhealthy for his sanity! Haha. Sanity.

You know what helps me keep my sanity? Lunch dates with my friend Kim. She's having a baby and it totally takes my mind off of all of this. We met at Chuy's today and we had a good two and a half hour chat and chips and creamy jalapeno dip!

I've used a lot of parentheses in this post. It's annoying me.

I just want to take a minute and let my 3 readers (love ya'll!) know that, yes, this blog will be about Chris and his cancer...but originally I wanted to start this blog months ago for my own reasons. I was hoping it would be one of those fun crafty, recipe filled, witty blogs about mommyhood no I'm not pregnant but instead, right now it's this. I'm okay with that. Just know that from here on out I'll probably dabble into those other topics too. Okay, not the crafty part but I do love to cook and eat...I'm also planning on strapping Chris to the couch with my laptop so he'll post on here himself. Because I know you all love him madly. I think he's actually working on his own blog he's going to steal my 3 readers! so I'll point you in his direction whenever he lets me know.

Hey! So why don't you guys leave a comment. Just say Hi! or something. We'd like to meet our blog stalkers.

Pretty soon I'll be writing a post about chemotherapy. Look for it.

Alright this blog is all over the place I don't even know how to label it. I'm done.