Lame
August 22nd, 2003
moment I took a step where the curb wasn’t and was in pain.
being unable to see your feet and having your balance just a little not. And I
found myself desperately wishing there were someone who would take care of me,
decide, yes we’re going to go see a doctor or maybe even that I should lie down
and put my foot up. But Raven’s got a paper due, and there was no way I was
going to sit in an emergency room with a hyper four year old, loquacious six
year old and miserable chicken poxed nine month old. And once again I’ve
decided we’re utter fools for living in a city where we have no extended
family.
Okay, really there’s more here
than self-pity. And shock and outrage that this could happen at so inconvenient
a time. I recognize that I’m lucky I have health insurance and if I had needed
emergency care I could have handed my two older kids over to a friend who was
right there, probably even gotten her to take me to the emergency room. I am
capable of a pathetic, slow walk, I was mostly scared and embarrassed when I
fell.
But it was the second time this
week when I had to decide whether a consultation with a doctor was necessary. I
took Søren to our doctor and got confirmation that this is indeed chicken
pox, that will be $20 please. I then came home and looked in a couple of home
healing books for any tips on making him comfortable, how long to expect this to
go on, talked to a friend about how long he’ll be contagious, what the
incubation period is. There’s a lot more free information available on the
internet, and one of the things that I’m secretly thrilled about with the
so-called “Information Revolution” is the unseating of any one Authority whom
you trust with such a large area of your family’s life. I went through an
uncomfortable paradigm shift with the midwife-assisted birth and reading all I
could about birth to realize that not everything a doctor does for you is always
in your best interest. That doesn’t mean, however, that with all the
information in the world I am comfortable deciding what’s a sprain, what’s a
twist, what’s a bug bite, what’s a
rash.
Mostly growing up has been a
gradual thing — there are occasional hallmarks and a few jolts. I still look
over my shoulder for the adult when a waiter says “Ma’m” and when we bought our
first house after years of renting, it took a week before I stopped thinking how
annoyed the real owners were going to be when they saw all of our stuff in their
house. Nothing, of course, compares with taking your first child home from the
hospital — how can anyone trust you with this amazingly small and vulnerable
innocent little person? I don’t know what I’ll do to prepare my own children
for negotiating with a plumber or demanding what they need from the
representative of their health insurance company, only I think good parenting
means they won’t have to worry about these things until they are prepared to
handle them. But I suppose the lessons just keep coming at you until you get
them down. Wish some of them were less painful than this, though.
