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 their