Yesterday Julia Ellen had her 2 month well-baby check, the prerequisite to getting several vaccinations. The only appointment I could procure was at 9:20am so I packed up the kids after a quick breakfast, battled the Beltway traffic, and found the last slightly legal parking space on base. There were not many people in the waiting room in the pediatric clinic so the kids spread out to read and look at picture books. The corpsman called our name and I whisked Julia Ellen back for a few minutes alone to get her measurements. (13 pounds, off the chart!) A short while later they called us again so I gathered up the small children, leaving Will and Mary in the lobby, and followed a nurse back to a small examining room. I entertained the kids by balancing Timmy on one knee to read storybooks while simultaneously nursing Julia Ellen until the intern came into the room.
"OH! Do you want me to come back?" "No, she is all finished," I reassured him. Interns usually begin their year in July, but this guy seemed very inexperienced as he asked question after question, "Does anyone smoke in the house? What does she ride in in the car? Which way do you have the car seat facing? How do you manage 6 children? Does anyone in the house shoot? Does anyone in the house smoke? How do you deal with stress?How old is your house? Do you smoke? Is your husband going to deploy? How to you discipline 6 children?...." It felt more like a police interrogation than a medical checkup, with a cop trying to confuse a suspect into admitting he did it.
It seemed that he wanted to get a confession out of me, "Yes, I'm so overwhelmed every day. I don't know why I had 6 kids, no one should do this! I beat them to get them to behave like the angels they are being right now. Call social services and take them away so I can get a full night sleep!" I was polite, but getting a little irritated and he finally finished and said that the staff physician would be right in.
10 minutes ticked by... 20 minutes ticked by.... 30 minutes came and went. After almost 11 years of waiting and waiting for military pediatricians to show up, I finally snapped. I began to rant aloud, "How long is a well-child check supposed to take? 2 more minutes and I am out of here!" The 2 minutes passed very quickly as I got Julia Ellen back into her clothes, "Let's go!" I told Will and Mary who had been patiently reading while strapping the baby into her car seat.
I did call the clinic later and ask if I could go back and get her shots at the immunization clinic without the physician's signature on the chart. They took my name and number and finally at 4pm the doctor called to simultaneously apologize and blame me for what happened. "I understand that this is a teaching hospital, but with this many children I have been the guinea pig more times than the average. I certainly don't think it is fair to expect me to keep 4 small children quiet in a tiny space for over an hour and leave a 9 and 10 year old alone for that long."
This summer I plan on getting the baby's 4 month shots at the local family practice clinic in Maine, just paying out-of-pocket. I have a feeling that I won't be kept waiting for over an hour for him to pronounce her fat and fabulously healthy.
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3 comments:
Well Babys, I don't do them. Too many years of interrogations and raised eyebrows and bad advice. Docs only see us for sports physicals and when we are sick.
grr! I am SO not looking forward to going back to the base clinic. *SIGH* If it's any consolation, they grill those of us with only two kids just as hard.
I love the "Are you stressed?" question. "Ummm, hellloo, I'm a military spouse. We're ALL stressed!"
Yes, I have actually been so frustrated by some of these waits and appts. (and I could hear the guy in the office next door talking to his wife on the phone when I'd already been a hostage for 45 minutes about where they should eat that night) that I have answered that way, more than once!
If you were farther south, I would recommend the peds at Ft. Myer. They actually tried to call once to warn me that they were running late!
But the last one, a few weeks ago, the nurse went down the safety list, reminding me to keep pot handles turned toward the rear of the stove. At that one I told her, "I do not use the front burners. She is smart enough to move the step stool and be up touching the hot burners faster than I can chop an onion."
Look, lady, I wanted to say. At least pretend you think I know what I'm doing.
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