My Life as an Asthma Mom

    When I look back to our 22 journey with allergies and asthma, I wish I would have done things differently. If only I had known what resources were available to our family! Since my kids were ALWAYS sick, I decided to be a stay at home mom. Trying to pay the bills on one income with 3 kids with allergies and asthma was nearly impossible. Especially since we were frequent visitors to the pediatrician, Asthma Doc, After Hours Clinics, Urgent Care, ER and hospital.  Hospital Bills   My kids were in the hospital a total of 15 times (12 for asthma), plus they had several surgeries. So we  had a LOT of medical bills. We had an ongoing payment plan at our local hospital.  I would call their billing department to ask them to add our portion of the hospital bill to my tab - and the employee would laugh. I would tell them, "I'm not kidding. We have a payment plan, and I need my 20% of the bill added to our tab." Then the employee would say, "Ohhhhh." Mmhmmm.  Groceries

  I'm into podcasts these days (I know...I'm always late to the game!) I was listening to "Chasing Life" with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.  They had an episode called "In the Blink of an Eye" and talked about how their producer received a traumatic brain injury.  The producer was involved in a bad car accident and doesn't remember much about it. The doctors didn't hold out hope that she would come out of the coma.  But - she's ready to go back to work about a year after her accident, lengthy hospitalization, and physical therapy.  It was interesting to hear about Dr. Gupta and his producer talk about being resilient. Life happens and many times there are things outside our control.  So....how do you handle life when it throws you a curve ball? I loved this quote from Dr. Gupta: "We will all one day find ourselves in circumstances we would not have chosen. And when we do, we must remind ourselves that what is in our control is how we react to the hand w