Have you ever had a run of such bad financial luck that you felt like the universe was out to get you — or such good luck that you felt truly blessed?

We've had an interesting run — first bad, then good — in the Kratz family lately. It's been so unusual that I can't resist sharing.

It all started a couple of months ago, when the Deseret News announced that it was changing the health insurance plan it offers employees. While premiums would go down, we were told the new plan would include substantial deductibles for the first time. The percentage our insurance company would pay, after the deductible, was also going down for many procedures.

We were told the changes would go into effect May 1. Like many of our co-workers, we quickly scheduled a whole spate of April dental and medical checkups for our family in an attempt to beat the deadline. I remember joking at the time that, once May arrived, the new plan should work great — as long as no one in our family got sick.

I guess I was tempting fate.

On May 12 — less than two weeks after the new insurance plan started — my wife was washing a glass bowl in our kitchen sink when the base broke and shattered, slicing her right hand between her thumb and forefinger.

She called to let me know what happened and drove herself to the emergency room. (Yes, I told her that was a bad choice!) She was in tears when I got to the ER, mainly because she was worried about how much it would cost us to deal with her injury.

She got excellent care in the ER and, a week later, had surgery to repair the nerve, tendon and muscle in her hand. Her recovery is going well, which I'm sure is a relief to all of you who read and enjoy her restaurant reviews in this newspaper.

The bad news is that the bills for the ER, surgery and rehab are still rolling in, and they're substantial — much more substantial than they would have been if her accident had occurred just weeks earlier.

D'oh!

It's not like we weren't trying to prepare for something like this. We were taking some of the money we were saving through lower insurance premiums and placing it in a credit union account just in case we faced a big medical expense. Of course, we weren't able to save much in the paltry two weeks before my wife's accident.

But as I said, we did have some financial good news to offset all of the bad.

You see, my wife and I just refinanced our home.