Get Physical for Adoption

 

Candace and I learned this, sometimes it is okay to lie. I know what you are thinking. “What? Aren’t you trying to prove that you are upstanding people, ready to adopt a child? And now you are blogging about lying? I wouldn’t trust you with a popsicle in a freezer!” Hold on folks, let me explain. Follow me, back in time to the peak of flu season…

 

 

 

Candace and I just got our paperwork, hooray! We can start taking inky steps towards adoption. Well, as we went through the paperwork, we saw that we needed to complete a few medical tasks:

No problem (or so we thought), we have a family doctor we could do this through. Candace and I didn’t want to wait though. We marched posthaste to a Patients First -on recommendation of our adoption agency mind you- , to a ‘doc-in-a-box place, to get our testing started. I, being overburdened with a sense of honesty, told the folks there we indeed had a family doctor. After already waiting over an hour, we were told sorry No-Can-Do. Slightly dejected and definitely frustrated Candace and I left with our sights on going to our family doctor the next morning. Out of desperation we checked in at sick call and again got the Ol’ “sorry we can not see you today, but we can see you July 14, 2018”. Ok, maybe that was a slight exaggeration but it was going to be a long time till they could fit us in. We had deadlines to meet and waiting any longer was not in the cards.

 

I offered to bribe them with a crisp Washington **wink wink**, oddly that did not work. What were we suppose to do now? Here is where deceit enters the story. The folks at our doctor’s office suggested we go to a Patients First. (mental slap the nurse). After we told them about our last adventure, they said we did not need to necessarily divulge our family doctor situation. Hint taken, and were gone with a poof of dust left where we were standing. We couldn’t go back to the same Patients First office we had just been to, of course the closest one to our house. So, we went to the next closest one, about 40 minutes away. We strolled in, cool, acting nonchalant, it wasn’t like we were getting ready to be dishonest or anything right? Wheezing, coughing, flu-infested individuals everywhere. The place was packed and looked like as close to the start of a zombie apocalypse as it could. We got to the question about having a family doctor, hesitated and entered ‘No’. I lied! There, I confessed it! It feels good to get that off my chest. This was still just the beginning of our adventure though.

 

Only having to wait 2 hours to go back to get our exams (we will cut them some slack, zombies apocalypse, flu season-) filled to capacity.  When we get back, we find out that they cannot do the physical and skin TB test on the same day as the drug screening.  This meant on day 1 (my birthday by the way), we could get our physical and have the sub-q injection for the TB test. Day 2, we went back for the drug screening, and on day 3, they read the TB test. That’s right we got to drive 40 minutes each way, 3 days in a row, to a flu-riddled Patients First office all in the name of adopting a child. Candace was on me constantly about using that dumb hand sanitizer. Thanks Candace, that probably had a lot to do with us not getting sick.

 

Cost for physicals, TB test, and drug screening: $500.00

Fuel cost driving back and forth to the doctor’s offices: $45.00

Hand sanitizer, that saved the spread of the zombie outbreak: 1.99

 

Doing all that you can to get your adoption paperwork completed in record time: PRICELESS