What's your copay?

Co-pay and Doctor?  Don't you love that question?!  You might be lucky enough to get a hello or maybe you're one of the lucky ones who have a team of physicians who are just as interested as you are in your or your child's diagnosis.  If you are blessed with that team, make sure they know it!  This is not partial to Cyclic Neutropenia by any means.  How often is there a diagnosis that you hear for the first time?  There's an overwhelming amount of illness especially those who directly affect children.  Often I've been greeted with "doctor and co-pay?"...  How about asking for my name or better yet greeting me using my name because you already know it?!  There's a thought!  What happened in our health care to make people so cold?  For me, my heart breaks for the complete stranger I happen to be behind in a local grocery store who's having to select what item of necessity to put back.  My heart is torn apart when I'm singing Mileigh to sleep in the midst of an admission for neutropenic fever and I stop to listen to cries of the sick baby next door.  Where has the passion gone?  Is it gone?  Was it ever there?  Surely at one time people weren't wrapped up in the electronic charting, insurance filings, and co-payments.  For the sake of humanity I have to believe that there was a pivotal point in every health care professional's life that drove them to care for people.  I believe there's a compassion there that somehow gets covered with all the logistics.  I know in my heart that we, as people, were put here to love on people...not to count co-pays.  Now don't get me wrong; charting, co payments, logistics are all very important but I feel their place on the list of priorities has gotten off base.  I have often wondered in the past what was more important, my co-pay or my mama's intuition.  At times I've found myself almost saying out loud "hey, did you just hear me?".  It's up to us to be heard, to keep pushing, to fight for our children and ourselves for that matter.  I wish my pushing would have benefited my Joeli.  She didn't have that kind of time.  The time it takes for pushing and phone calls and "logistics". 
   My goal in raising awareness for Cyclic Neutropenia, Idiopathic Neutropenia, Congenital Neutropenia, and Autoimmune Neutropenia is not just for Neutropenia.  It's for every parent, every child, every person who's been handed a diagnosis that is virtually unheard of to be heard.  The goal is to one day not have to jump through flaming hoops to be taken seriously.  Maybe if people care about people, and start speaking up about some of these illnesses they won't be so unheard of.  I believe medical practices need that much more than the co payment information that they have direct access to before asking you.  I do know that there are practices and physicians that truly go above and beyond to care for their patients.  Those are the ones that give me hope.  Those are the ones that will one day assist in the change of perspectives.  To those, I say thank you!  From the bottom of my heart, thank you!  You are more than a co-pay...don't forget that!  Make yourself heard in a way that is respectable and educated.  The world is now at our fingertips.