As I mentioned in my last post, my oldest is a full-blown hypochondriac. Often times I am trying to find a constructive, thoughtful way to convey that he needs to grow a pair.
3 weeks ago my husband called to ask for our insurance information. I was on my way to work….on a Saturday (for another post). He had just bought a car so I thought he was finalizing insurance things. Why he couldn’t reach into his own pocket and look at the shiny white card on his own was beyond me.
“No, our health insurance,” he corrected.
“Health insurance? What’s wrong?”
“I’m on my way to urgent care, we think P broke his foot.” And with that revelation, he hung up.
I began to call him back to ask the 20 questions I had but decided to wait a few minutes in case he was dealing with a squad or a triage nurse. A few minutes later he called back to tell me P’s injury happened during a soccer game (again, that I had to miss thanks to work) and that so and so’s dad has been in sports medicine for over 20 years and was certain it was broke.
It wasn’t even fractured. In lieu of Children’s Hospital Urgent Care, my husband went off a parent’s recommendation of an urgent care located pretty much in the ghetto. I think it was named something like URGENT KARE or URGENT KARE KIDZZ.
Dr. Studio 54 had clearly received his diploma from the Sally Struther’s online school for doctoring. Only at URGENT KARE would the doctor have gelled hair, a thick gold chain around his neck and one too many buttons unbuttoned to reveal chest hair.
After the “doctor” left for a moment to do a line, I turned to my husband and asked innocently,
“Now remind me again why we are here and not Children’s? I thought we loved our children.”
After Care Instructions
So the doctor recommended elevating his foot along with ice. He had crutches and was told to use them for the next 24 hours.
3 days later he is still on the crutches. He is saying things to me (in a serious tone), “I’m learning to walk again” or “Should we get a handicap sticker for the car?”
At the end of the 3rd day I heard Tiny Tim hobbling down the stairs, attempting to use his crutches when all of a sudden there was a huge crash.
“That’s it!” I screamed as I come down the stairs like Joan Crawford.
“Gimme those, gimme those” I said as I snapped up the crutches.
“I have had a fractured foot twice now thanks to stilettos. I had to wear a boot but I have never needed crutches. You are not that injured. Your foot isn’t even fractured. If it hurts this bad we are going to the emergency room.” I inhaled deeply as I had just exhaled all of the above in one breath.
He did not like this, gave me a dirty look and began to limp away. I felt like an asshole and followed behind him, trying to explain my reasoning.
Being a martyr, he said, “no, no. You don’t want me using crutches, I won’t use them.”
And use them he did not because within 24 hours he was back to normal.
The Twitch
The other recent condition was his twitch. This twitch would only surface when he thought about it. After a few weeks I told him I would make an appointment for the doctor. Here is how that conversation went:
“Yeah, I’d like to make an appointment for my oldest.”
“And what are we seeing P for?” The phone nurse asked.
“Um, well, this is going to sound kind of stupid but he feels like he always has to move his hands and fingers when sitting down.”
As the words came out of my mouth, they sounded stupid to me. Weren’t all children fidgety most of the time? “Um, my child is a living, breathing child,” is what I felt like I was saying.
After a trip to the doctors, it was determined that he had an extremely mild tick that would eventually go away. The irony is that since going to the doctor, the tick has disappeared.
I just took a break from blogging to make my youngest a peanut butter sandwich. This woke P up from a nap and I shit you not, the first thing out of his mouth, “Oh my God, my thumb. It feels like it’s going to fall off. I don’t know whats wrong with it.”
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