umm, hello... doctor...

With having a brother who's a doctor, I think it's funny hearing his stories of all the crazies he's encountered through his years of practicing medicine. ...ALMOST as good as my teaching stories.  :)  kiddin.  What sticks out in my mind are the people who show up at the hospital or call the doctor on a holiday for ailments they've been dealing with long before office hours were over.  ...Like weeks before that, but they decide that Thanksgiving day is the perfect time to finally deal with it.  Well, my judging has caught up with me now that kids have entered my world.  I have become one of those people and for that, I feel a lot of guilt.-- both for making fun, and for the doctor I have to call on his/her day off.

I've done this twice now --not calling on the exact holiday day, but close enough.  With Drew, it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving when what seemed like a normal virus started to affect his breathing.  Knowing the danger involved with my nephew's serious asthma, I didn't want to risk waiting for Monday to come around.  It turns out he had RSV and was only 5 months old so it could have been serious, but it wasn't and I don't even think they did anything for him.  I lucked out in that we were able to take him to a doctor's office somehow linked to our own pediatrician, but I still had to call him first to find that out.

The second time occurred last week, New Year's Eve day, with little Benjamin.  Similar situation: He'd been running a fever since Monday night but I kept thinking it was about over.  By Thursday, he started getting the snots and a bad cough on top of the low-grade fever-- still seemed like a typical virus.  It was still there Friday (actually worse) and his breathing seemed labored and shallow.  ...AND he was too lethargic to walk with Papa hands, which is a big deal.  So I sucked it up and called the doctor's office, which was of course closed.  They told me to have him seen because of the fever lasting so long.  I am actually glad we were out of town (well, I will be until I get the bill) because Dayton has a great Children's Urgent Care just a few minutes from my parents' house and we are familiar with it from living there before.  We got in quickly and then spent the afternoon ruling out breathing/asthma problems, pneumonia, bacteria/infections, etc and basically found out yep, it's a virus.  Just a really long-lasting one which mimics the flu, according to the doc.  So again, nothing to do about it.  And of course ONLY because we gave into calling the doc did the fever break that night, and by the time we got home on Sunday his appetite and energy were back.

So no more snickers and eye rolls for me on this subject, and if all goes well, we won't be seeing another doctor until ...Easter morning.