Ballooning

Have you ever felt like a balloon? Not like your clothes are getting to tight, and you're about to burst out of them, but like you're getting too full of stuff, and if one more thing happens, you're just going to pop.

We are two weeks away from when I went into the hospital the first time with Witten because I was having a headache due to dangerously high blood pressure. A week and a half later, having already spent 4 days in the hospital, I was back with blood pressure worthy of a stroke, and I was giving birth to my son at only 28.5 weeks. Getting so close to this milestone with Reese is nerve wracking. Not just because I hope to surpass it. Of course I do...who wouldn't. This time though, it's more of the unknown. Most mothers go into their pregnancies without the burden of knowing the potential dangers. I was blissfully ignorant last time. Now, it's a waiting game. Now I know that things can change in a second, and it's the not knowing when the shoe is going to fall that weighs so heavily on my mind. (A little air of trouble has been blown into the empty balloon. It's not too much...it's just in there now.)

Our house is on the market, and selling it before I go into the hospital would of course be the most ideal situation for us. Until then, we wait. (More air.)

We also want to find a new house, but we're fairly picky about the land that it sits on. There are very few houses out there that fit our criteria, and every time one sells before we sell ours, it adds a little more pressure inside the balloon.

Witten has been getting preventative shots for RSV all season because he was a preemie. He got them last year too, and they cost us about $80 a month. Since January, we've not only been hit by the cost of the shot from the insurance company, but we've also been absorbing large payments from the doctor's office for each of these shots, something that we didn't have to pay last time, and weren't expecting this time, resulting in an additional $150ish a month. (Another small breath into the balloon.)

Mitch changed jobs, and is now a contractor for his new company until he is officially hired on. The contracting firm has provided him with insurance, but with a deductible twice that of his previous company. We just took a hit of another $1400 this morning to pay off my impending hospital bill. (Another breath into the balloon, this time a bit larger.)

Mitch's new company may be willing to hire him on early so that we can be under their insurance when Reese is born. (This lightens the pressure somewhat.) Then we realize that their deductible is 4 times that of the deductible of his original company. Add to that the fact that we'll have to pay for Cobra for a month, and the possibility that I could still deliver early which would be while we're on the expensive Cobra plan, and that leaves us paying for Cobra, the entire deductible on his current insurance, and then the entire deductible on his new insurance, for a total of 8 times what this delivery was originally going to cost. (Huge gust of air.)

Today I found out that the STAAR test that we will be administering next week is under more security than the SAT. If something happens in my room, I could not only lose my job in the district, but I could lose my certificate to teach anywhere. (More air.)

Add to that the fact that my administration decided to give me a class full of kids I've never met when I've had my own testing group all year that I'm familiar with, AND, I'll be administering a test I haven't administered in 3 years, and the air in this balloon is reaching a dangerous level.

This afternoon, the counselor was trying to explain this debacle with the testing, and I just broke down into tears. I couldn't catch my breath. Then, Mitch tried to talk to me about insurance tonight at dinner, and the water works started again. I just had to put my head in my hands, close my eyes, and hope that things would stop long enough for my world to stop spinning, and for someone to let some of the pressure out.

This is not the first time I've felt like this. It comes in waves. Everything is going well, then all of a sudden the carpet gets ripped out from under you and you're left hanging there, hoping that your grip is tight enough to get you through. I know that we'll get through this stressful time. It's just hard to see the other side right now.