blog as helpful calendar of fear and joy

Beck goes to school two days a week for the summer, in part to keep him in the habit so that September is not a shock and in part to maintain my sanity and ability to do something other than A) tell stories about Oswald and Foofa and Prairie Dawn going to the zoo, B) hide sweet potato puree in cheese quesadillas and C) endlessly read Twitter for a constant connection to living, breathing adults.

So today was the first chance I got since last week to dig into why I was denied a credit card recently. It involved getting my credit report, which we do regularly. I was sure there was a mistake, as we have never had any credit issues.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered, upon extremely close reading, that there was a medical debt outstanding. From my AMNIO. IN 2007.

Naturally, we never received this bill. We also moved that next month, but we doubt that there were any bills as the people who bought our apartment are our good friends and regularly handed us our piles of mail for the months after we moved. I called the hospital patients account people, who had no record of me. I called the separate OB billing office they uncovered for me, and left a message (REALLY?). Left a message with the doctor who did the procedure (Polish, not Russian as I had blogged, it turns out).

And finally I started wild googling using the name of the collection agency mentioned on my credit report. The first couple numbers didn't lead me anywhere, but finally I found the one with my debt.

"You want to make a payment?"

"Uh, no. I never received this bill. And I don't understand why my insurance didn't pay it. I never got word from the doctor or the hospital or the insurance or you."

Clicking typing sounds.

"We don't have record of any insurance."

"Ah. That would be a problem, then, wouldn't it?"

So they are sending my bill so I can hash it out with insurance. That is going to be a treat, I am sure.

Here's the blog-related moment, though:

The date on the credit report says 4/2007. This is the date they claim the bill went overdue or something, but I missed that at first. And so when the first hospital patient account woman asked for the date of service, I said, not missing a beat, "April 3, 2007."

Because that was the Penguin's due date. And as she put me on hold, I thought about the sick, twisted weirdness of having my 20 week anatomy scan for Beck on the date I was supposed to meet the Ill-Fated One. It also ended up being the day my Shadow Pregnancy had her baby. It is one of those dates etched into memory, for sure.

Which made me realize that this was not the date of service at all, since the bill was clearly an amount that could only be my amnio.

So I had to look it up. Calendar doesn't go back quite that far. But the blog does. So I was quickly able to find the date of my amnio (March 8, 2007) and got to relive that hideous weekend of waiting for the results.

The blog as blessing that holds delicious memory and as record that keeps bringing up the hard stuff.