I had to take JJ back to see Dr. Allergist this morning. Considering the bad experience I had last time, my friend Emily graciously offered to watch KK for me during the appointment. What a great help that was. Thanks Emily!
So, Dr. Allergist comes in and he's clearly in a hurry and clearly not in a great mood. He asks me why we are there, so I tell him that he was planning to give JJ part of his 6-month immunizations. I then tell him that JJ developed a large welt at another allergy testing site several hours after the actual testing. And then we had a very uncomfortable conversation:
Dr. A: And you brought him back to see us right? No, you didn't! Why didn't you bring him back in to see us? He clearly had a reaction and you should have brought him back in!
Me (confidently): Well, as a nurse, I felt that it wasn't an emergency, and that it wasn't worth bringing him back in and spending another 2 hrs in your waiting room with my 2-year-old asking "where is my milk" every 3 minutes, only to have you say "Yep, it's a reaction"...when I knew I could just tell you about it at this appointment and you'd say "Yep, it's a reaction" and the end result would be no different.
Yeah right....IN MY HEAD!
It actually came out more like this:
Me (in a quivering voice): I'm sorry. I didn't think it was serious. I'm sorry. I won't do it again.
(And you were so proud of me for a minute there, weren't you!)
The problem with being a nurse and also being a mommy is that I either overreact because I know too much about what can happen, or under react because I don't think it's an emergency. The problem is, I don't know when I'm overreacting and when I'm under reacting. And in fact, I often believe that I'm overreacting when I'm actually under reacting! I fully believed when we started this whole allergy testing thing that they would ask me a few questions and then send me away saying I was wasting their time! This time, apparently, I under reacted....ALOT. And got quite the lecture for it.
And I'm sorry. I won't do it again. I promise.
I can see where that is a problem, but even if you are not a nurse, all moms struggle with this. I guess it is worse though if you are a nurse as you might feel like you "should know better". I tend to be the kind who under-reacts because I don't want to over-react, if that makes sense! I can't figure out why my blog titles won't update on your blogroll, hmmmm. So much to learn!
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