Day 221 (futility)

Thank G-d, Husbinator woke up feeling much, much better. However, since there was a chance that the stone had just moved, rather than passed, we decided to do the medical rounds, anyway.

We went first to the Clalit clinic on the Yishuv, where we were squeezed in to see the doctor. Kidney stones are not to be messed with, even in the bureaucratic culture of Israel. It turns out, however, that the Clalit general practitioner on our Yishuv is of the "I am an expert, and you are a lowly non-expert, so everything you say must be wrong" school of doctoring. After lecturing Husbinator on how everything he was saying was wrong, and he knows nothing about kidney stones (this is his third time with the stones, poor guy!), she relented and gave him a referral for an ultrasound.

Thankfully, the Clalit receptionist on the Yishuv is of the "I know how the system works, and you look like you could use some help" school, so she very kindly made some phone calls and scheduled an ultrasound for us, then drew us maps of how to get to the clinic in Central Jerusalem.

Long story short: we went, I got a great parking spot, Husbinator got an inconclusive ultrasound and was promised results in a week (seriously???), and I got a ticket. (Just because everyone else is parked on the sidewalk is no guarantee that I won't be the only one charged 500 shekel for that choice. I have no idea how parking works in this country.)

What we learned from this little experience is that Husbinator and I will probably be switching insurance carriers. (We'll keep BSM with Clalit, because he sees the pediatrician rather than the general practitioner. Also, the pediatric nurse speaks English. Also, Clalit has a 24-hour nurse AND pediatrician hotline, complete with video-chatting. This is a useful thing to have for a child.)

Later that day, we went to the library on the Yishuv. It took a bit of wandering around to find it, but we got there in the end. It's a tattered, tiny little thing, and it costs 100 shekel per person (including babies) per year for membership. Still, I feel it's important to support the local libray, so I figured we'd take out a 6-month membership to be all civic. But it turns out the librarian (also a very helpful lady, which is one of the reasons I was going to take out a membership) can't accept cash, and we still don't have Israeli checks. We could go to the Yishuv secretary and pay there, but I don't actually want to pay for the privilege of borrowing the few books from this library, anyway... So I'll sell out my local library and check out what the nearby Jerusalem neighborhoods have to offer Eventually.