Ok... worst week ever.
Well, that's not really true, but it did suck quite a bit. We started last Sunday with a trip to the Urgent Care Center for Lily, who was complaining of an earache. (For those of you who haven't been, an urgent care center is a doctor's office that you don't need an appointment for & is open when your doctor isn't... instead of going to the emergency room for something minor) We've been to a few before, and they're all pretty much the same - except for this one... If any of you have an abandoned drive-in theater in your neighborhood, imagine that without the enormous screen. We were driving down Main St. in Pottstown looking for the address, when Sara spotted a peeling pink ranch-style building with an "Urgent Care Center" sign leaning defiantly forward out of the weed and gravel parking lot... a sign that could have easily been replaced with a "Pottstown Meth Lab" or "Slippery Buddha's Asian Massage Parlor for the Hopelessly Single or Morally Bankrupt" sign and fit right in. With some trepidation, we pull in and wait a few minutes for them to open, finally are admitted, and shown into the back room. The doctor, who is wearing what looks suspiciously like a butcher's coat, does a quick once-over of Lily and determines that she has a sinus infection. In order to precisely determine her weight so that he can prescribe her the precise dose of antibiotic required - he plopps her onto a bathroom scale with two palm trees and some sort of yak painted on it, and then walks INTO THE BATHROOM attached to the examination room and comes out with a bottle of amoxicillin. Now, we're assuming that there was some sort of medicine cabinet or storage room back there, but were sort of afraid to ask. I was a bit tempted to ask him to check me out too though, just to see what else he had back there... "Feeling a bit under the weather? Let me just dash into the pooper and see what I can get you"... "Gout, you say? Let me get you some allopurinol from the ol' sock drawer here... and a foot brace out of my glove compartment, and we're all set. That'll be $10."
Well, that's not really true, but it did suck quite a bit. We started last Sunday with a trip to the Urgent Care Center for Lily, who was complaining of an earache. (For those of you who haven't been, an urgent care center is a doctor's office that you don't need an appointment for & is open when your doctor isn't... instead of going to the emergency room for something minor) We've been to a few before, and they're all pretty much the same - except for this one... If any of you have an abandoned drive-in theater in your neighborhood, imagine that without the enormous screen. We were driving down Main St. in Pottstown looking for the address, when Sara spotted a peeling pink ranch-style building with an "Urgent Care Center" sign leaning defiantly forward out of the weed and gravel parking lot... a sign that could have easily been replaced with a "Pottstown Meth Lab" or "Slippery Buddha's Asian Massage Parlor for the Hopelessly Single or Morally Bankrupt" sign and fit right in. With some trepidation, we pull in and wait a few minutes for them to open, finally are admitted, and shown into the back room. The doctor, who is wearing what looks suspiciously like a butcher's coat, does a quick once-over of Lily and determines that she has a sinus infection. In order to precisely determine her weight so that he can prescribe her the precise dose of antibiotic required - he plopps her onto a bathroom scale with two palm trees and some sort of yak painted on it, and then walks INTO THE BATHROOM attached to the examination room and comes out with a bottle of amoxicillin. Now, we're assuming that there was some sort of medicine cabinet or storage room back there, but were sort of afraid to ask. I was a bit tempted to ask him to check me out too though, just to see what else he had back there... "Feeling a bit under the weather? Let me just dash into the pooper and see what I can get you"... "Gout, you say? Let me get you some allopurinol from the ol' sock drawer here... and a foot brace out of my glove compartment, and we're all set. That'll be $10."
After a quick call to Poison Control to make sure the dose was correct, we assumed she was on the mend, and were on our way. She seemed pretty good for a couple of days, started coughing on Tuesday night, by Wednesday we got a call from Denise at her daycare, and found out later that night from an actual doctor that she had pneumonia, a disease that I always spell incorrectly on the first try. If you haven't seen a baby with pneumonia before, let me tell you, it's pretty impressive. Most people (with the possible exception of my wife) try to keep up appearances to a certain extent when they're sick, but kids just let it all hang out. By the time I got home on Wednesday night her skin was the color of a canned water chestnut, and looked like it was about to melt off. Unfortunately, because every part of this week sucked, I was stuck at work for a couple of days and only really saw her in the wee hours of the morning while she was asleep, but by this morning she was almost back to her turkey gravy colored self.
In the upcoming chapters - New and exciting diseases, seventeen hour days, and newly acquired art for the masses.
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