I cost $252.00

I was cleaning my room on Saturday when my Dad knocked on the door. He held up a couple of green-colored papers and asked, “Do you want this for your Book of Remembrance?” I looked at the papers, and guess what they were? The hospital receipts from when I was born. Now, I know what you are thinking. Who in their right mind keeps a hospital receipt for almost 27 years? The answer is: My Dad. 27 years later though, I’m sort of grateful that my parents never get rid of anything.

Here’s the breakdown:

*Nursery, for 1 day $110.00
Now, I’m pretty sure if you go to Hotwire or Travelocity and look for a decent hotel room, it costs about the same amount. So what I want to know is 1) what was so luxurious about that basinet? and 2) How many other babies were in that same room with me, being charged the same amount? Those hospitals are making bank!

*Newborn Evaluation $50.00
This one, I can’t really argue with. The insurance I have right now charges me $25 to go see the doctor. So I figure, spending almost 50 bucks to figure out if I’m alive isn’t so bad.

*Department of Pathology $39.50
Thirteen dollars to test my red blood count. Eight dollars to do the direct Coombs test. In case you were wondering what that is, I looked it up. According to MedlinePlus, the Coombs' test looks for antibodies that act against your red blood cells. Another eight-fifty goes to doing the PKU Blood test. Have you ever read a label in the grocery store that has a warning “Attention Phenylketonuriacs: This product contains Phenylalanine.” Well, this is the test to see if you are a Phenylketonuriac. Apparently it’s a blood test to see if your body has the enzyme needed to process the Phenylalanine. If you don’t have the enzyme, the Phenylalanine can build up in the baby’s blood, and cause brain damage, seizures, and other bad stuff. Apparently, I’m not a Phenylketonuriac. However, I’ve always thought that would be fun, because you could go around saying “I’m a Phenylketonuriac,” and very few people would understand that you were even speaking English at the time.

*Nuclear Medicine $29.50
My Mom can’t remember what this is for. Wikipedia says that nuclear medicine takes scans of your body, similar to a CT or MRI, but different because they use a different process. Basically, they took some sort of x-ray to see if everything was working well. Apparently it was, because we ended up moving on to the…

*Newborn Discharge Exam $23.00
Twenty-three dollars to ask, “Can I go home?”