Graduated!!!

Lena Graduated!!! At first the doctor said 'shuu...something' a word I don't know, but I had NO trouble understanding what she meant! Then she congratulated Erica for graduating.

Meaning, she has STOPPED taking medicine for asthma, and no longer needs to go in for monthly check-ups. Thank GOD and it's only about five years after I thought she should stop!! Well actually it's probably not that long and I could probably check somewhere on this blog, but it certainly FEELS that long!

I immediately went out and celebrated by spending money.

Getting to this point was a long journey, even without counting the comedy of errors in getting to this particular check-up:

After missing the appointment last Tuesday, we went in on Friday morning. The system here is appointments in the afternoon, drop-ins in the morning. If you miss your appointment, you can't reschedule (too much trouble for the nurses to track down the doctor to check her timetable), you have to come in again as a drop-in. So on Friday, the girls took the morning off school, and I crossed my fingers that we'd be finished by 10am for Erica's Observation Day at Kindy. One of those lovely, more onto-it nurses you wish you could be blessed with all the time twigged that we had the wrong day, and our doctor wasn't in that morning, so asked me would you like to just see whoever was there, or would you prefer to come back next Wednesday when she is here? I chose Wednesday, partly because the kindy class observation day start time was looming down on me, also because I had forgotten to load my wallet with this month's health budget cash, but mostly because I really wanted to see 'our' doctor, because she had been tantalizingly mentioning stopping, and had halved the doses already, and I thought a different doctor would just do repeats to not step on her toes. 

Roll on Wednesday and I get all the kid in the car, school bags ready, health budget firmly ensconced in my wallet, and off we go... only to see that it's paper recycling day. Mum will remember last time we did it, and she suggested we go back and get the papers, and and I said "NOOOO!!!" because you have to sort them and stack them and tie them up and well it just takes forever. But luckily at the beginning of this month I did all that, so it was ready to go, so we swooped back home and Amy and Lena helped me bring the stuff out to the road - three stacks of magazines and newspapers and two bundles of broken-down cardboard boxes.

The driving down the road, I saw some bags of clothes and realized I'd forgotten to put the old clothes out for recycling! I decided to flag it, but then realized I didn't have my 'doctor bag' with all the insurance and hospital ID cards in it. So back we flew again, only for me to realize the doctor bag was in the car all along. Oh well, the clothes got put out! Amy threw them out the window of the car as we passed the specially designated power pole.

We finally got the hospital, Erica was wonderfully well-behaved, while Amy and Lena stunned me with a full-on, claws-out cat-fight over who got to hold the iphone while they scrolled through the photos! Shame on you girls! How embarrassing!

Amy is on one puff a day for another two months, Erica had a bit of a lingering cough this month, so she is continuing, and got some cough meds thrown in as well. And Lena got to stop!!! She couldn't believe it at first, she checked with me two or three times. Then of course she immediately turned to her sister and skited about it. Sigh.

More blatting around ensued: combini trip for snacks and Erica's kindy lunch (which I didn't have time to prepare), girls to school, Erica to kindy, me to the chemist to pick up the meds, then to the camera shop to deliver some old disposable cameras we found, then to the combini again to get me an iTunes card, since this month's medicine and hospital bill was so low, to the big drug store to get cheap cereal and bananas for breakfast, to the cheap clothes store to get some clothes: $40 for jeans, a belt, a tank top, a lacy knit over-top, and a necklace. Not bad!

And now to some of that useful stuff, I suppose. I HAVE to fit in some laundry today, between typhoons. And send some jewellery and accessories to Maria to sell on trademe, and sort some photos, and clean a bit more of the spare room maybe, so I can work on some more stuff to send to Maria on Friday.