Australian HealthCare: Socialism

Day 1 on my own:
So, I was feeling very confident to handle all three boys after my mom left on Sunday. I had planned my meals, snacks, nap time and play time activities, etc for the day. Then while I was typing up an email I heard a big "smack" in the other room and then a scream of pain and then that silence when you know it's so bad that they are just waiting to catch their breath so the next big cry can come out. I ran in the other room and see Tate's mouth dripping full of blood. I immediately became hysterical. My first reaction is that I looked at Teagan and said, "What did you do!?", which I now feel bad about. Teagan just started yelling and saying, "Tate did it all by himself. I didn't do it." So you could see some of the blood on the side of the night stand and I could see that they were playing on the bed and Tate fell off and sliced it open right under his lip. I started panicking looking in his mouth to make sure all his teeth were still attached and then see a big gash inside his mouth that he bit down on when he fell. I immediately ran to the First Aid kit my mom left (which I was sooo grateful) and pulled out an antiseptic wipe (which was totally dry- and is even that much funnier if you know my mom) and then wet it with some water and wiped off all the blood. To my horror, it looked like he needed stitches. Ugh! My mind reverted to how I felt when Teagan had to get stitches, TWICE! It was the most awful thing for me to bare. I HATE watching my kids be hurt and feeling helpless. I did NOT want to go through that again.

Now, this happened at about 2:45 in the afternoon and Jeremy was still at work. I felt panicked that I didn't really know where to go. I hadn't used our insurance here yet and didn't know how it worked, not to mention I didn't know where the hospital was. Plus, it didn't sound convenient to drag all three of my boys there by myself.

I called Jeremy and his work was nice enough to let him come home. I was trying hard not to cry cause all I could think of was doctors and nurses strapping Tate down to a board and tying him down to give him millions of shots in his lip to numb it for stitches. Jeremy got home a little after 3 and we headed off to the hospital with our unreliable GPS. Yes, I said "UNreliable" which is another story in itself. At any rate, we did actually make it to the hospital to find that the ER is a FIVE minute walk from the parking lot, which I found odd. Isn't the point of "Emergency" somewhat of an urgent matter? We then hiked it in with the three boys and walk thru the doors to see that there were literally over 100 people waiting in the ER. WHAT?! Jeremy and I looked at each other with a look of dread. I stayed for two hours until they at least saw him to see what we were there for. It was also irritating because Tate's cut was still slowly bleeding. I was missing my essential oils that I couldn't bring with me because of Australian customs. Geranium would've stopped the bleeding right away. I finally had to take the other two boys home after that since there was an unknown time of waiting ahead to see the doctor. Jeremy stayed there for another FOUR HOURS with Tate. I went home and made dinner and waited a bit before I came back to find that many of the same people were still there waiting. I asked to go back into the pediatric rooms to see them and got there in time to meet with the doctor.

As I walked through the back, I noticed that not only were the rooms packed full, but the hallways had patients laying on beds, hooked up to IVs in it. The rooms had 4-5 people in them. It looked like what Grey's Anatomy looks like when there is a natural disaster or something. I made it back to see my sweet little boy falling asleep on his daddy's shoulder and he started crying when he saw me. I picked him up and held him until the doctor and nurse came back over. Luckily it was something that could just be glued and he didn't have to get stitches. Pheeeww!

The end of day one?
Plan failed.
Will try again tomorrow.
Cost of day one?
$433.00 AUD *Hopefully our insurance will pick it up for us. We don't have medicare (which is different than the US medicare). Medicare here is basically the medical card you give them that takes off what the government will pay, if I understand that correctly. Since we aren't citizens, we don't get that.

I've now added American Healthcare to the docket of things we are grateful for.