As I mentioned earlier, our son is sick. This time last year, I was learning more about the human ear and baby functions than second-year med students.

This year, I actually get to use some of it.

More correctly, my wife gets to use it while talking to half of the doctors we’ve seen this week. I get to say, “hold on and talk to my wife when she’s done talking to your nurse” to the other half.

It turns out that during the holiday season, it is pretty hard to see all the really good doctors that you take the trouble to line up during the rest of the year. Quite understandably, they have all worked in their respective fields long enough that they spend the holidays with their families. So, our family has been in two offices and Urgent Care thus far. Next week, we’ll be in our real peditrician’s office and seeing the ENT that surgically repaired by son’s Choanal atresia.

Ah yes, it’s a special time of year. 🙂

The issue with seeing alternate doctors is not a question of their skill. So far, all of them have been quite good, knowledgeable, and helpful. One of them was even familiar with Goldenhar’s Syndrome. The issue has been trying to explain everything to each doctor. It goes someting like this:

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We believe he has an ear infection, though it could possibly be a urinary infection as well. No, no one has ever been able to see in his ears, so the ear infection cannot be confirmed by sight. Yes, his symptoms are consistent with an ear infection otherwise, and yes we know that the other symptoms are consistent with a variety of other diseases, including a simple viral infection.

You can try to look in his ears, but he’s going to scream and you’re going to see a lot of nothing.

Yes, they are really narrow, aren’t they? They’re twisty, too. You should see his MRI. Anyway, he’s screaming all night through, can’t you simply give us an antibiotic? No, we don’t believe in solving everything through medication, ask our peditrician about the war over vacinations we had. Yes, he has had all his vacinations, it just took longer than most babies his age because of the MMR.

No, no, that really has nothing to do with why we’re here today. Note the screaming child – this is why we are here today.

Well, he had a catherer put into him Friday to try and determine that, but they didn’t get enough urine to do a strip test at the clinic. No, you may not catherer our son again, call the hospital, they should have the results today or tomorrow.

102 Thursday, 102.3 yesterday, 100.0 this afternoon at 12pm. The one Thursday was an armpit measurement. Yes, we did call Thursday, they said to come to the clinic yesterday. They told us to come here today. No, the one today was rectal. Well, he’s been taking Glycolax for constipation on and off for three weeks. We couldn’t do an effective rectal Thursday. Yes, today he pooped more than a Great Dane after Thanksgiving.

Look, we’re delirious. No sleep in five days. I’m not entirely certain what it means, either.

The rash that covered his face this morning came after one dose of Amoxicillin. Yes, we know that allergies do not normally appear after one dose. His father is severely allergic to penicillin – his respiratory arrest occured after one dose. No, our son did not go into respiratory arrest, his father did when he was a tiny child. Really, though, he’s got a rash that makes him look like Mister Miracle. Can’t we try a different antibiotic? Isn’t there a salve or something we can put on him to alleviate his itching?

The Justice League. Minor character. Escape artist.

Yes, honey, I’ll let you finish telling them what happened.
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I’m not upset, mind you, even if the one doctor did not even know who the Justice League are. It did get difficult to repeat the same things over and over. Most of them tried to be patient as we(read my wife) explained everything to them. I think two of them stopped taking notes after a while because they couldn’t believe that our son’s medical issues keep preventing a simple diagnosis. Our doctor today was very honest in saying, “no one knows for sure what is wrong, so I’ve learned to trust the mother.”

I got testy with one doctor, I think it was because she reminded me of a Gilmore conversation circa season one. What I mean is that there were rapid-fire three word questions. She also tended to cut us off after we said four or five words. She wasn’t trying to be rude, she was trying to arrive at a simple diagnosis. I truly believe she was doing her best to help us.

The first season was in 2000, before I gave up TV, but I digress.

At the end of it all, what have I learned? I’ve learned that God loves us very much. You see, we didn’t really have the money budgeted to pay for all of this. Too much was spent on Christmas to cover three co-pays and two perscriptions six days before payday. For my wife, a good friend happened to be in the pharmacy when she was picking up the second perscription. She got to share and be heard. It turns out her friend’s middle child had RSV this week, so she could relate.

For me, I got to spend some time alone so that I could get perspective. After a few minutes, I just had to laugh at myself. Last week I was stressed about work and about a feeling of futility in my walk with God. This week, I get to see him work in a lot of different ways. You see, if this had happened in November, we would have no money for a couple of bills and food would have been reminiscent of college. We paid off his actual birth in November, so this month, we had a sizeable chunk of money available. Had it happened in October, we would have little money for bills or any kind of food, we had just paid off my CPAP machine and my wife’s uninsured prenatal visit. In addition, it was his birthday and our anniversary.

More than that, God allowed me to see the humor in it all. I never thought I could find humor in our son’s health. Call me weird, but once I got over my fear that he was dying, I could appreciate the circumstances and my rather unique approach to parent-doctor dialogue.

God promises to tend to our needs. I needed to know that our son would be fine and I really needed to laugh. I’m saving this story to oppress friends at parties with. It tickles me when I think about it.

Happy New Year everyone! I hope your year is filled to light, laughter, love, and joyfulness.