doctor | The View Through The Window

I only just sort of don’t like you

Posted on December 12, 2014 by sheemsters

It’s that time of year again. When you get a little note in the mail from your doctor’s office telling you to pop in for your pap in. Pap smear, that is. I don’t know anyone that gets excited over doctor visits. Just the thought of one gives me a low level panic attack.

I am a classic case of white coat paranoia. I smell death everywhere in the exam room and see the grim reaper himself in a lab coat. Okay, so I have a Chicken Little type of irrationality, but what do you see when you walk into a gynecologist’s office? Needles and probes and some sort of steely aluminum shit in the corner that looks like an effed up version of Wall-e. My first thought when I saw that machine was god damn, where the hell is he going to stick that? I don’t think I have any hole in me big enough.

But then again, doctors know more about your body than you do. They also have their own unique way of relating the news to you. I ask my cardiologist what’s up with my heart and he’ll say well, you have paroxysmal supra ventricular tachycardia and/or quite possibly idiopathic ventricular tachycardia and I’ll open up my eyes big and wide, lie through my teeth, and say oh, yeah, of course! okay, that makes total sense now!, even more effing confused than before I asked the question and mentally ticking off the way I’d like things to be done at my funeral. Dear Mr.John Hopkins, you need a crash course in how to explain non deadly afflictions in less deadly sounding terminology.

These cats look very much like I do during and after said scenario.

As bad as it is, a cardiologist visit is nothing compared to an appointment with the gynecologist. Having someone who looks like my grandfather tell me to lay back and spread my legs is disconcerting, to say the least. They also seem very suspicious of my efforts at losing the baby weight over there. It might have something to do with the fact that the baby starts kindergarten next year.

The question of so are you going to have more kids? is inevitable and I can’t answer Gee, I don’t even know when the next time I’m going to take a piss is. I’m guessing it’ll be when you ask me to do it in a cup, but neither one of us knows for sure, right? They of all people should know that kids don’t ask for an invite. They just show up, as did my youngest, and leave you wondering where did you come from?! I’ve had my uterus securely under lock, key, and alarm system since then. Only god can hack that code.

Speaking of which, good god, doctors love to judge you. The way they ask how many partners have you had, with steely gaze fixed, makes you squirm and wonder if even that man who tried to feel you up in the crowded elevator counts, with the afterthought of damn, that was eight years, two kids, and some pounds ago. If I gave him the offer today he would probably refuse.

The biggest bummer of all is that most medical professionals look more like Dr.Phil than Derek Shepherd.

versus

Then there’s the trust issue. He’ll assure you he’s gentle when his speculum wielding leaves you requesting a fucking epidural, but if at the same time he tells you you have esophageal hepatitis type F aortic kidney disease with inflamed pulmonary hardening of the abdominal cavity, you’ll believe him. I bet half the people reading this thought that shit was real.

Don’t let this post take away from all the good doctors do, though. Don’t think that. You know what I’m talking about. That sneaky little thought that if a doctor did any real work, he’d be called a nurse. That kind of thinking is not nice. Sure, he might only pop in for five minutes, but those five minutes are enough for someone with years of medical experience and if he was any better at what he did, he’d fix whatever was wrong with you with a twitch of his mouth and only the halo over his head as a light source. Unless he graduated from shadymedschool.com, in which case I’d fly my ass right outta there. Doctors do 95 percent of the good in this world, if you don’t count the one that performed Dick Cheney’s heart transplant. That mofo should’ve known better.

Coming up next, The Doctor’s Version : A Rebuttal. Spoiler ahead : Includes pissed off as hell MD’s who claim they are unfairly blamed for all medical problems of every fucking patient we come across. Might also include diagnosis of put down the Fritos and get on treadmill for smart ass female patient.

Disclaimer : That was a joke and I don’t promise any future posts on a doctor’s version of the shit he has to endure at the hands of whiny patients when he just tells them stuff for their own effing good. I mean, where would I find someone like that?

Cat pics courtesy of https://catmacros.wordpress.com/tag/biting-sarcasm/. McDreamy pic courtesy of my dreams. Dr.Phil pic courtesy of just pick any effing place, he’s all over the internet anyway.

The good doctors and the bad doctor

Posted on December 1, 2014 by sheemsters

Note : Some sensitive material of a medical nature and some swearing involved.

We almost lost my youngest back in 2011, when he was around sixteen months of age. Most people don’t know anything about it because updating my Facebook status isn’t the first thing on my mind when frantically pacing the hallways of the intensive care unit. It’s not something I like to talk about anyway, but will in order to make the point I intend to make with this blog post.

For Halloween 2014, my son wanted to be Elsa. As in the snow queen. He wanted the boots, the cape, the hairdo, and to be belting out Let it Go instead of trick or treat at the top of his lungs. He practiced everyday, with my scarf tucked into the back of his shirt as a cape. This, of course, causes me and my husband some concern.

If you’re wondering why, you obviously haven’t been through the hellish rites of passage known as elementary and high school or you’ve stoned yourself enough to have forgotten. I can just picture the scenario where some smart ass, ignorant fuck of a child, with parents who share similar attributes, introduces the word fag to my sweet little boy. And this will start the cycle of self doubt and insecurity in him, he who just wants to sing Let it Go and be Elsa the snow queen for Halloween, darn it.

While he walks around the house clutching his Thomas and Friends trains to his chest , I wonder what will become of my baby. That’s what he is, after all. My youngest and most likely my last. It’s something I wondered around three years ago, too, when he lay in my arms, only half conscious, while we drove him to the local hospital’s emergency room from his pediatrician’s office. He had fallen in and out of consciousness that day, pooped a diaper full of blood, and had spent the whole week clinging to me, not wanting anyone else and not willing to let go. I felt like a mother kangaroo. It had gotten so bad that at one point, I walked out of the house as soon as my husband walked in after work. I told him I was going out and to not call me. I drove to the nearest park, turned the car off, and cried.

Two doctor visits with the same doctor at our son’s pediatricians office earlier on in the week had resulted in a diagnosis of allergies. Twice. But the third time we took him in, right before being sent to the emergency room, a different doctor took one look at him, saw the potential for a lawsuit due to her colleague’s inability to recognize a child near death when she saw one, and sent us on our way to the local hospital, where they hypothesized about what exactly could be wrong with my son until a test for his hemoglobin levels returned at a level of 2.2. Normal for a child his age is around 14.

A blood transfusion and an ambulance to shift us to the larger Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago were ordered. They loaded my son into the ambulance with the blood transfusion and an oxygen machine going side by side. The nice paramedic tried not to make it obvious that he had to keep adjusting the oxygen levels because my son was having difficulty breathing. We arrived at the emergency room of Children’s Memorial. Surgeons, nurses, emergency room doctors, and the nice paramedic all crowded around us. I’ll never forget the feeling of being cared about that I got from that crowd. It was in stark contrast to the vibe I got earlier at the other hospital. One smiling, calm face after another introduced his or her self to us and asked that we tell them exactly what was going on, in detail. Their demeanor made me think that med school must have taught a course on keeping your shit together in the face of doctor doctor please please please fix my kid.

My son was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia, caused by too much milk in his diet, which we were giving him too much of because he had been refusing his food while sick. Have you ever heard of death by cow boob juice? Me neither. Apparently the dumb fuck of a pediatrician who diagnosed him with allergies couldn’t connect the dots when I had told her he had been on just milk for days and that he had swelling all over his body. Swelling is a classic symptom of iron deficiency anemia. I’m guessing she pulled the degree from Rush out of her ass.

After spending three days and two nights in the hospital, one of which was in the ICU, we got to take our son home, which isn’t something every parent gets to experience when leaving a children’s hospital. I realize we were the lucky ones. I will forever be grateful to the doctors and nurses at Children’s Memorial. How they manage to keep their smiles and their sanity intact with the kind of work they do is a mystery to me. I know I would’ve gone bat shit manic depressive a long time ago.

It’s been over three years since then and the road to raising two young boys has been only slightly bumpy. Until this one big bump of my son sometimes wanting to be a girl. Eighty percent of the time he’s fine with being a boy, watching Thomas and attempting to beat up his big brother. Then there are those moments when he wants me to buy him a purse with his favorite princess character on it. Confused much?

I’ve thought about it, and really, the only thing I’ve wanted from my sons ever since they were born is for them to stick my husband and I in the same old folks’ home when we get to the diapering and spoon feeding part of old age, so that we can crap our pants at the same time, eventually croak together, and I can graduate from the school of life with full nagging honors. Oh, yeah, and for them to be happy. Super happy. When you’re a parent, all that matters to you is that your child exists. Parenting is a one way street. You give and don’t expect anything in return, although there’s a very good chance you’ll get a lot back. I don’t see how it’s possible to add fine print to the contract that was to love my kids forever.

So no, I don’t care if my son wants to be a queen, either now or twenty years from now. I don’t care who my boys marry or don’t marry or if they go live with cows on some ranch in Montana. I just hope that once in a while they’ll leave their bovine pasture and come see us, especially when my husband’s telling the nurses he’s fine with being donated to science as long as it gets him away from me.