Tender Mercies

We received a tender mercy this week. We have been praying for it so hard and it is such a relief to have received it. We announced in February, I think it was, that we had paid off our unborn baby (babies) and that we had finished after 6 years paying off Quinns student loans (most of which was to pay for his broken arm in college) and we were debt free. We were so happy about it and it felt so good!

After the twins were 4 days old I ended up in the hospital due to an extremely rare liver condition called fatty liver of pregnancy (we have been planning on writing a post about that for a while, so I will get Quinn to write that soon). Anyway, I was so worried about the cost of going to the hospital. I have never been in the hospital for anything related to my health before so I had no idea what it would cost. I asked Quinn so many times if he had a clue how much this would cost us or if he knew how much our insurance would cover. He had no idea how much it would end up being. And of course it takes the hospital forever to send us a bill. While we waited I prayed so so so hard that we wouldn't have to go back into debt. But unless our portion of the bill was quite small we would be back in debt because we had just used our saving to get out of debt. We did get the doctors bills (I saw many Dr's) and those added up to a number of hundred dollars.

Well, we finally got the hospital bill. Keep in mind that I was only admitted into the hospital for about 12 hours. Our bill before insurance totaled about $15,000! I could have died. I can't even begin to express how ridiculous that is.  I didn't' receive a single pill, medication, or treatment. The doctors didn't' even touch me! Ok, one doctor pressed on my liver to see if it was tender, but that's it. Luckily our insurance covered about $10,000, but that still left us with a $5,000 bill.  I couldn't believe it. When I found out how much the bill was I was so frustrated at first. I was actually very angry that I had even ended up in the hospital. I immediately told Heavenly Father that the bill was so much more than we could afford but that we needed so much help still. I had no idea how but I told him we needed help not going back into debt. We continued to pray. I told the Lord that we had obeyed the prophets counsel and had gotten out of debt. I told him that had been a huge priority of ours our whole marriage. I told him that we needed to be blessed for it. We continued to pray, pray, pray.

After we received the bill Quinn called the hospital to get an itemized bill so we knew what we were being charged for. While on the phone with this lady, they were chatting and he happened to mention that we had just had twins. As they talked further (and this wasn't' something she was originally planning on telling him) she started asking him how many children he had and how much he made. Then she told him that this is hospital is actually part of a not-for-profit healthcare system and that there is paper work we can fill out to see if the hospital will excuse some of our bill as a form of charity. We gladly filled it out then waited and waited and waited AND waited. We were still praying so hard. Finally this week Quinn got a call from the hospital and they said if we empty our health savings account to pay what we can (no matter the amount) they will excuse 100% of our bill. HOLY MOLY the Lord answers prayers! We had about $170 left in our health savings account after paying for our twins and the doctors bills.

We firmly believe that this situation was yet another tender mercy to go along with all the other tender mercies we have received lately, especially with the birth of our twins.  It is truly an answer to fervent prayer.