Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Citizen Kate, Revisited
As some of you will remember, I am in the middle (hopefully, moving toward the end!) of attempting to acquire my British passport.
Technically, I am what is known as a “British citizen by descent.” In other words, I have a British-born parent and therefore am automatically grafted in. (If I could insert the haunting melody called “Lament for the First Generation” by Celtic musician Liz Carroll here, I would. But I digress.)
Believe me, the British-born parent is no easy ticket to a passport to paradise. My application packet, which I considered complete to the most minute detail, has now been returned to me not once but twice.
The first time they needed my father’s American naturalization papers, which they did not request on the original application. He arrived in this country and began the arduous process of becoming a U.S. citizen during a time of the laws changing, so the British Embassy now requires that I prove my father did not renounce his British citizenship to become an American citizen.
Where my father’s citizenship papers have gone, I have no idea. My sister Bridget and I spent two entire months going through every jot and tittle of paperwork in my mother’s home when we moved her into assisted living five years ago. We’ve NEVER seen either his citizenship papers or his discharge papers from the British army. These are documents, I’ve been told by the highest authorities, no Brit would ever relinquish.
In fact, when I paid a visit to the National Archives here in KC to get a certified copy of Dad’s naturalization documents, the archivist said, “Your father would have framed this certificate and hung it on the wall for all to see.”
I said, “You mean next to the carton-sized plastic dispenser of Lucky Strike cigarettes?”
Anyway, they’ve returned my app again. This time, they say my birth certificate was not issued within three months of my birth. What I sent was a certified copy of my birth certificate, the original of which WAS issued within three months of my birth. Their note to me said, “The year 2006 is not within three months of your birth.”
Well, duh!
I don’t have a 53-year-old piece of paper, and neither does my mother. The Embassy says in lieu of this document, they may (they don’t commit) accept a baptismal certificate or hospital birth records. Before I knew that my mother actually did have a baptismal certificate that might fly (praise the Lord for infant baptism!), I called good old St. Joseph Hospital here in Kansas City.
“I was born there in December, 1953,” I said. “I need to obtain a copy of my birth record.”
“It’s been destroyed,” the medical records supervisor said.
“Destroyed? As in a fire, lightning strike, or tornado? An act of God, in other words?”
“I’m sorry. The state does not require us to keep medical records longer than ten years. We still have a few that are older than that, but NONE as old as—”
“You’re kidding, right? Why on earth would a hospital destroy its patients’ records? EVER?”
“Ma’am…where would we keep all of them?”
“Um…I don’t know. In a computer? On microfiche?”
So, here’s my suggestion du jour. If you have ANYTHING in your medical records that you know you’ll need in the future—such as the chronicling of diseases, disorders, surgeries, etc.—keep your own copies! In fact, every few years, pay the price to have your doctors and hospitals copy your latest history and send it to you.
I had to do this recently to purchase some life insurance. In addition, when we switched primary doctors, rather than having one doctor transfer the records to the next without me seeing them, I paid to get copies for us, and then made cheap copies as a back-up for the new doctor’s files.
I am still outraged every time I think about this. All told, I have spent WEEKS of my life mostly dead at St. Joseph Hospital, and they can’t even dignify my personal medical drama with a bit of hard drive space?
Who needs HIPPA to protect our medical privacy when all the records are going to end up shredded anyway?
Anyone else experienced this, or is it just me?
- Oh, goodnees. So, did Mom have the copy of your baptism certificate for real? Was it in your baby book? Wasn't your birth certificate in there, too? I want details...
Posted by Bridget on 05/31/07 at 07:38 AM
- I'm confused. Didn't you have a birth certificate when you got your passport. How about the vital records in the state where you wre born. I do have my original birth certificate tucked away, but it really does me know good. I'm rooting for you, Katy.
Posted by alison on 05/31/07 at 04:40 PM
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