Saturday, January 29, 2011

how many corpsmen does it take to weigh one child?

Usually it only takes one, but if you are having all three daughters seen at once, it takes 4 to take all their vitals. One each to record the numbers and one female to protect against sexual harassment accusations. The result was 8 people all crammed into one little room, but I certainly didn't mind. When I called the appointment line a few weeks ago it was deemed impossible to have more than one child be seen on the same day so I was forced to schedule us to drive downtown to the local military hospital 6 Fridays in a row so the children could visit the doctor. Everyone had one little issue that needed to be dealt with, Mary and her newly found antibiotic allergy, Charlie's need for a EpiPen, Maggie's complaint about her eyesight... but after the first appointment in which we didn't even have the chance to sit down in the waiting room, the staff was gracious and made accommodations so we could squeeze in all the children in 2 visits.

So now we have it noted in Mary's chart not to give her amoxocillin, Maggie's vision is deemed 20/20, we no longer need to fear death the next time Charlie stumbles across a yellow jacket nest, and Will has his physical completed for camp. And little babydoodle, Julia Ellen, has been pronounced to be the sweetest, most developmentally on-task toddler known to man. This has been the most pleasant experience at a military hospital I have encountered in my 14 years of delivering babies (unlike this episode at Bethesda), dragging children to the pediatrician, and my own infrequent medical issues. I have to give kudos to the staff at the Family Practice clinic at NMCP for all their helpfulness and accommodation to my large brood.    

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