Olivia had her second flu shot today. No weight was taken.

Or how the government affected our family:

Dr. Friedman has been very insistent that everyone in our family who is in close contact with Olivia needs to be vaccinated for the flu. Arnie and I were lucky enough to get to a clinic the day they announced the shortage of flu shots. Maddie has an appointment with Dr. Friedman on Monday evening for her shot.

Yesterday I received an email from Dr. Friedman. The government had confiscated all their private insurance patient’s supply of flu shots. If we had medicare or medicaid they would be able to give her a shot (ARGH). But other than that we had to hope we could find one elsewhere. I spent the better half of yesterday afternoon on the phone with our care manager, Jean trying to find a flu shot clinic that would administer a shot to Maddie. I was getting borderline hysterical..

Jean was awesome. She is so resourceful and keeps me calm when I’m ready to pass out from fear and hysterics. She went so far as to call the Director Of Health in our town to see if he could help us. He gave us the names of three pediatricians in town who had the vaccine and suggested we have Dr. Friedman’s office call one of these doctors to see if they would give us a dose for Maddie.

I called Gloria and gave her the information. They were going to call around for us.

Not 10 minutes later Gloria called me back. The government decided to release the private insurance patients supply to the doctors and they are getting their vaccines in within 2 – 3 business days! We scheduled an appointment for Monday, October 25th.

While I was on the phone about the flu shots, Dr. Friedman picked up the phone to talk. She wanted to make sure I understood she does NOT want Olivia in her office during flu season. We rescheduled her 4 month checkup from December 1 to November 10th so we can hopefully avoid the entire winter flu season in the office. She told me she is planning on setting up special “checkup” hours in the morning where no one who is sick is allowed in the office in order to keep the babies healthy.