A Show for the Waiting Room

Soon after we arrived, I needed to take Adrie to the doctor’s office for her 12-month checkup. All we had to do first was find a doctor, and make an appointment. A cinch, right? The entire process only took us three months, and turned the 12-month into a 15-month checkup.

Honestly though… it was a huge process. The insurance company sent me a huge booklet (kind of an ironic name, right?) with all of the available doctors, hospitals, and clinics in the state. And it had all the information available in no less than 16 languages. Talk about a waste of paper! Maybe they could try asking what language people want their information in before sending it next time…?

Anyways, the doctors were listed first by city, and then alphabetically. Nowhere were the doctors listed by specialty; you had to go name by name to figure out what they did, or what languages they spoke. We don’t live in the nicest city, so I was wary of offices that were close by… but I didn’t want to have to drive too far away, either. I ended up searching in a five-city radius, and each city had several pages of doctor names. Needless to say, it took a while to search through that many different doctors and find each one who specialized in pediatrics.

After making a master list of all the options, I googled each doctor and clinic, read the reviews and ratings, drove by the ones that looked promising, and called to ask questions. It was tiring. This whole process would have been so much easier if they had the doctors listed first by city, then specialty, then alphabetically. Or if they just had an online search function with advanced search filters. In this modern world… *sigh*. Just saying.

After three months of paperwork, phone calls, and going back and forth on all the options, we finally picked a doctor that had great reviews, and made an appointment. I loaded Adrie, Winnie, and Liz into the car, and took off to our first doctor’s visit in our new home.

First impression: this place is way different than Utah. For one thing, they have free valet parking. For the doctor’s office. Cause parking is that hard to find? Apparently yes, yes it is. But I managed on my own, thank you very much! Next time… I might take them up on it, now that I know it’s there… For another thing, my children were the only children in the waiting room. In Utah, the pediatrics office is always swarming with kids! What’s more, they were playing “Captain Underpants” in the waiting area. My poor children have never heard so many “potty” words in one place at one time before. Ha ha! No joke. Poor Liz was struggling between wanting to laugh and wanting to hide the whole time. Winnie was just laughing and repeating every silly phrase… Dear me.

While we were sitting there waiting to meet our new pediatrician, I sat down to fill out a huge stack of new patient forms. I got all the way to “Patient’s Name” …then stopped and thought. I counted on my fingers, mumbling quietly to myself. Oh man. It was no use. I must have been staring at the paper for a solid couple of minutes… Finally I called Ben.

“Hi, Hon! …well… I’m kind of embarrassed. Umm… what’s Adrie’s middle name?”

*Facepalm* I remembered all the other girls middle names… and ran through them all half a dozen times. For some reason though… Adrie’s was not coming to me. I helped name all of these babies, I promise.

Ben had a good chuckle about it, even though I doubt he thought it funny. (This is Ben interjecting… I thought it was hilarious.) He made me take a nap when I got home. I think I worry him on a daily basis.

With a little bit of hubby help, I finally got the papers filled out, and it was time for Adrie to see the doctor. Because we had missed her 12-month checkup, she was behind on her immunizations and needed to have a couple extra shots, in addition to the two she would regularly have needed. So… four shots it was. And that wasn’t all. The doctor also wanted to take some blood to check for lead and anemia.

I didn’t realize that she meant whole vials! I assumed that they would do a finger prick, like our last doctor did with my older children at that age. Then they sent Adrie to the lab to have the blood drawn. Yeah… the lab! I thought that was a bit of overkill, since they’d just be doing a finger prick. Apparently not.

Adrie was terrified of the nurses. As soon as they pricked her with the needle, she was screaming bloody murder. This is when I finally understood that they needed to take two full vials of blood from my infant. Poor thing!

Fortunately, Adrie is blessed with very sweet big sisters, and Winnie and Liz came running to the rescue. We were all trying to comfort her… the sisters were both trying to hold her, stroke her hair, and help her play with the bouncy ball she just gotten for her other 4 pokes. Meanwhile, the two nurses were trying to draw blood, without tripping over the other two children, and while holding down a screaming infant. And the vial was not filling with blood.

The one nurse kept moving the needle around in Adrie’s arm to try to find the vein. Honestly, when they do that to me, I end up with a bruise! Poor baby. Both of them had such pained expressions on their faces as they realized they were torturing this infant. They finally decided, after multiple attempts and no success, to take the needle out, asking if Adrie was dehydrated.  I didn’t think so, but I took out a bottle and gave her something to drink, anyway.

Seeing her lying there, tears still streaming down her face as she chugged away, the nurses were both cooing at her and looking supremely guilty that they were causing the darling baby so much pain. Granted… Adrie does look adorable when she drinks a bottle. I doubt they enjoyed their job that day by the time they were through.

When she finished her drink, they tried again, this time on the other arm. Cue round two of the screaming, the loud sisters comforting, the nurses wincing, and me also wincing. This time, thank goodness, they were successful.

Finally done, we gathered our stuff (which by now was all over the floor after the sisters’ desperate attempts to find something hidden in the recesses of the diaper bag to comfort the baby), and headed out of the lab. As we emerged, I noticed how quiet it sounded… that’s when I realized that every person in the waiting room was staring at us. At the sight of my darling baby, most of them exclaimed something to the effect of, “Poor thing!” That’s when I realized that the entire waiting room heard the whole thing.

Thank goodness for more paperwork… I’m sure I was blushing up a storm as I quickly sat down to finish filling out another form.

Adrie wouldn’t let me put her down for the rest of the day. It’s hard not to blame myself for every traumatizing moment my children experience while I’m around. I find myself snuggling and reading mountains of books to make it all better. I’ll let you guess whether it’s to make her feel better… or me. 🙂

Liz is needing to have an eye doctor appointment soon. Here we go again. Motherhood is not for the faint of heart.