Answers to a couple questions

A few people have commented that they would love to send Gracie something.  I really do appreciate your love and willingness to give Gracie something, however, I am uncomfortable distributing her address via the blog.  Anyone is free to contact me via e-mail (through my profile link in the right hand column of this page) if you have any questions regarding this.

Secondly, there was a comment regarding the costs of one unit of platelets.  After reading that comment I realized that I was not as clear on a recent post as I should have been.  I do keep detailed records of the bills that I receive from medical providers. However, I do not request bills from all of Gracie's appointments.  For example, we went to the cancer clinic quite often for check ups or transfusions.  These appointments required a $30 copay, per our policy.  We paid the copay at each visit and never received a detailed statement from them for anything that was done.  Similarly, I rarely receive statements from our pediatrician, ophthamologist and blood clinic.  Sometimes the hospital does not send a statement if we pay the copay upfront.  I know that my policy requires a copay though, so I am willing to pay that.  If there are additional charges, I will not pay them until they provide a statement of charges.

So I guess that is the long winded way of saying that I do not know what the charge for a unit o platelets is.  I would love to know as well.  When I started this blog, that is one of the things that I really wanted to be able to tell others.  I wanted to be able to allow them to estimate the future costs.  However, that is not really possible because of all the differences in insurance policies.  I keep track of my costs and I was happy that there was a maximum out-of-pocket expense on my plan.  When that maximum was reached (within 2 months of diagnosis), I realized that we still were required to pay copays.  The copays are not included in the maximum.  Each month the copays were $400 to $600 after our maximum was reached.  So even with an insurance policy where we supposedly have our total payments capped, we continued to pay much more than I had ever anticipated paying for healthcare.

Having said that, we have been richly blessed and humbled by the support that has been offered and given.  It has been amazing to see how many people really love Gracie!