"I'm going to talk to my MP about this!"

So Danielle was denied maternity leave because they take into account your total hours for the year, and because she does after school care, and is required to take school holidays, her hours came up short. So then she tried to see about the sickness benefit due to missing five weeks work due to her emergency cesarean, but no dice. So then she tried to claim ACC which was also denied. Earlier that day, she'd cut out an add for Marion Hobbs - our local member of parliament - which said her door was always open.

And so.

She called the number and explained her case to a person who said "that's just the sort of case she would be interested in". And so she has an appointment tomorrow to which she'll bring Abacus for the cute factor, how could you say no to that face? And in an election year too, everything falling into place. Maybe we could also push to have the privatized car park banished from the public hospital grounds while we're at it - we want blood!

Meanwhile . . .
Abacus' homecare visits have been going well - (hmm my American spell check doesn't seem to know what homecare is, I wonder why? Hmmmm.) On monday the nurse arrived but didn't have any vials to take blood, so just weighed her, she had lost a bit. The next day she came back with vials and weighed her again, this time she'd put on about 40 grams. To take bloods we had to warm her foot with a flannel, then the nurse stabbed Abacus' heel, to which Abacus didn't respond at all, she just continued to stare around the room with her shifty eyes. Unfortunately the blood was not flowing and so she couldn't get enough for a sample, the other heel was no good either, though Abacus certainly felt that one!

A couple of days later Veree (A huge fan of Abacus) came for a follow up and to take more bloods as the first ones were unusable. This time she heated her heel with a glove full of hot water which worked way better, the blood flowed and by the afternoon we got the results, her white blood cell count was up which is awesome, but her jaundice was up too, but nothing to worry about - and no real surprise as she's as yellow as a Simpson. But everything is going fine, and nurses are alway impressed with her progress.

I think she's becoming more aware of things. She spends hours looking around with her wide vigilant eyes and I think she might be recognising faces amongst the flux of light and shadow.