$$: Dec 8 — Medical Expenses and Christmas Gifts

Ugh.  Still try­ing to catch up on my Daily Dol­lar postings.

Phys­i­cal Ther­apy — $25.00
Another phys­i­cal ther­apy ses­sion for The Son.  His range of mobil­ity con­tin­ues to improve; he’s so very close to full range.  Actu­ally, the ther­a­pist says he has an extended range of mobil­ity — one that a base­ball pitcher would envy.  For years he had dreams of pitch­ing; too bad his inter­est in base­ball was bul­lied out of him last summer.

Although the range of motion is nearly 100% recov­ered, he still has to work on recov­er­ing his strength in that arm too.

He’s going back for another PT ses­sion next week; at that point we’ll eval­u­ate whether that will be the last or if we’ll keep going for another week or two.  So far the ther­a­pist has added addi­tional exer­cises and stretches at each ses­sion — not just repeat­ing the same stuff every time.  I have no doubt that going to PT was a good deci­sion as opposed to just try­ing to do exer­cises at home.

~ o o o O o o o ~

The Son and I went straight from phys­i­cal ther­apy to a home­school group field trip to tour a local TV news sta­tion.  The tour was fab­u­lous and fascinating.

~ o o o O o o o ~

Panda Express — $8.76
After the tour we had just enough time to run by the mall food court to pick up an order of Orange Chicken and Man­darin Chicken from Panda Express for The Son.  He had to eat in the car on the way to his final appoint­ment with the pedi­atric ortho­pe­dic doctor.

For the very first time in this bro­ken clav­i­cle adven­ture, the doctor’s office didn’t col­lect a $50 copay.  Appar­ently there’s a bit of con­fu­sion as to whether they should have been charg­ing me a copay for each visit.  I’ve been assured that I’ll either be billed for this copay or receive a refund for copays charged in error.  Yeah, right.  I’m not hold­ing my breath.…

Amazon.com — $256.10
A Christ­mas gift for The Son.  I’m so excited to watch him open this gift; he’ll freak!

So what is it?  We bought him a Wacom Intuos3 6x8-inch Pen Tablet.  Retail price for this item is $329 but Amazon’s price was $295.05.  We still had a gift-certificate bal­ance of $38.95 that was applied plus I got free ship­ping which brought my total down to $256.10.

The Son hasn’t even dared to ask for the tablet.  He’s men­tioned that he’d love to have one but he knows that they’re quite expen­sive.  Because The Son is who he is and because we spent more than usual on his birth­day this sum­mer, he assumes that we can’t afford a gift of this size for Christmas.

The Hus­band and I dis­cussed the gift and both agreed that this was the right time to get him a tablet.  We have no doubt that he’ll get a lot of use out of it and get a huge amount of enjoy­ment from it as well.  What more could you ask for from a gift for your child?

[For a run­ning list of Christ­mas gifts this year, check out my new Santa’s Gift List page.]

~ o o o O o o o ~

In addi­ton to my expen­di­tures, The Daugh­ter made a few pur­chases today as well:

Whole Foods — $15.09
Two pounds of lean ground beef (pur­chased at my request).

7-Eleven — $19.06
She tanked up the Impreza.  Mileage not recorded.

Related posts:

1. $$: Dec 15 — Phys­i­cal Ther­apy, etc.
2. Day 179: Gas, Gifts, & More
3. $$: Bone-Knitting on Veteran’s Day
4. $$: Gro­ceries, Clothes, Gas, Gifts, Soap & Donuts
5. Day 106: Car stuff, Church stuff, Christ­mas stuff and a big Stu­pid Tax