Not to mention, happy birthday, kiddo
Wednesday June 06th 2007, 12:40 pm
Filed under: Life

Having just written about the best doctor on the planet, here’s one that makes me all the more grateful to him, given the contrast between the two.

Twenty-three years ago today, I picked up the phone and asked the nurse which doctor was on call today.

Mind you, I had never said a word to anybody there about how I did not like one of the partners, but she shot the question at me, “Why? If it’s the wrong one, are you going to go out of labor?” I hadn’t even said I was in labor, but I hesitated, and then answered truthfully, because, well–it was the truth! “Yes.”

And that is why my son missed being born on my father’s birthday yesterday. Sorry, Dad. The wrong one had been on duty the night before.

That one–okay, there’s this medical axiom: if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. So when I told this OB that I was experiencing episodes of near-fainting, he decided that well, obviously, with a history of familial diabetes, I had gestational diabetes. Horses. He sent me to a nutritionist, who put me on an exceedingly strict diet and had me return to her once a week with a chart documenting every single mouthful. It was not fun, but I did it, and was proud of myself for sticking to it.

I told that doctor that I was following all those instructions, but I was still having those episodes. He questioned me: was I really following it? Yes.

And then he told me flat out to my face that I was lying.

He did not once actually check my blood sugar. He did not once do a urinalysis. He did not once pay attention to my blood pressure readings, which were very low (and would, much later, grow into full-blown dysautonomia). He did not once order a glucose tolerance test. This is just what he’d seen, over and over, this is what I must have, and anything to the contrary wasn’t believable to him.

And that is why my son was born the day he went off duty. I can be stubborn that way.

Okay, enough of the kvetching. Read on to the next post about the doctor who made a tremendous difference; that one’s far more important. Except for the real point of writing this one, before the zebra carried me off on a tangent: happy birthday, kiddo!

(P.S.: Some kids, when they leave home, their moms take over their rooms. This household, I take over theiramaryllis jungle bathroom. No contact solution here, nothing to see, move along, move along.)


5 Comments so far
Leave a comment

I don’t blame you. I definitely had certain wishes when it came to who was on call when I had my William.

I work in a diabetes clinic, and can I tell you how little physicians know about the disease? Its scary. I think every diabetic should be followed by an endocrinologist for their diabetes. It’s too complex of a disease to have just any MD handle it.

Comment by Amanda 06.06.07 @ 3:39 pm

Wow. I guess some people let the common-ness of it obscure the seriousness of it.

Comment by AlisonH 06.06.07 @ 6:55 pm

Labor at times can be quite controllable. If a laboring woman does not feel comfortable/safe, labor can totally stop. It happens all the time.

Thanks for posting the link to MonkeyGirl…I love her and I have found some awesome new blogs as well. THANKS! I also love your new blog layout.

Comment by Birdy 06.06.07 @ 10:02 pm

Happy birthday to the kid in question! 🙂

Comment by Amy 06.07.07 @ 6:53 am

Happy birthday, kid!

(that doctor story reminds me of the time I went to a walk-in clinic because I had a fever, but no other symptoms. The idiot takes one look at me, proclaims that I have a UTI (because people in wheelchairs have them all the time) – does not ask for a urine sample, does not listen when I say I don’t have a history of UTIs, just writes the script. I didn’t fill it.

Comment by Lene 06.08.07 @ 5:02 pm



Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)