Wasn’t I just blogging about how important the wish of good health has become in my life? Yes, I was, and hoping, too, that the health challenges of the last year were behind us.
Not so. On Thursday I took the kids to the doctor. My older daughter, we decided, with her consent, would be getting a second chicken pox booster. Chicken pox is spreading around her school, and others, too, in the neighborhood. It’s not just kids whose parents didn’t vaccinate them who are at risk. It turns out that the chicken pox is breaking through the vaccines, and the doctors are suggesting, as the school eventually did, that children get the booster shot, to be extra safe.
Let’s recall that I had the chicken pox in third grade and I still remember it. Of course, I remember it, in part, because I hated school that year, and got to stay home for three weeks. It was itchy, yes, but it came with some benefits.
I’m not always sure how I feel about vaccines. I’ve surprised myself by making more conventional decisions about my children’s health than I would have thought ahead of time. I go to a homeopathic doctor, but I take my girls to the regular old pediatrician’s office. For a time, the office had a nurse practitioner who was also trained homeopathically. She left to start her own office, though, and I stayed. I thought for a moment about not vaccinating; it all sounds so scary when you read the extremist articles about possible mercury poisoning from older-type vaccinations, or the claim that vaccines are linked with autism. In the end, it was scarier to think what would happen to my kids without vaccines, and that was my decision.
The baby was in for her annual checkup, which, silly me, I decided in advance, would be fine. Turns out, though, that the doctor is more than a little concerned that little Amelia isn’t crawling, or walking, or even pointing with gusto. Gross motor skill, apparently, is not her forte. She’s on the very, very slow end of normal, and the doctor, in her calm voice, wants us to get Amelia a full developmental evaluation. She thinks the other skills are fine, cognitively she seems okay, and she’s social, very much so, so the doctor is not worried about autism. Maybe the baby's failure to thrive at six months had a more lasting effect on her muscles. Maybe the muscle tone she lost back then put her behind a few months; she doesn’t seem to have the strength to crawl, or to support herself on her hands and knees. I keep repeating the phrase to myself: failure to thrive, failure to thrive. Six months later, perhaps I'm ready to feel the full import of it's metaphoric power.
Whatever it is, the doctor says to get it checked out. She gives us several phone numbers, one to Childlink, a city agency that provides services to kids, the other to Children’s Hospital.
I call the first and am told to leave a number, they’re busy helping other families, and will return our call later. I call the second, a well-regarded research hospital. The woman who answers tells me it will take a year to get an appointment.
That’s right. One year. In fact, they won’t even give me an appointment. They will only take my contact information and some facts about the baby, and the scheduler will call in a few months to set the date.
Something must be done. It’s not just calling for the appointment. As I told a friend at breakfast this morning, who nodded sagely, it’s calling everyone we know with medical connections and learning the real scoop on how to get an appointment sooner. It's all that extra work to figure out the system. Wish me well. We parents turn fierce when it comes to protecting our little ones, and heaven knows, someone is getting appointments in less than a year's time. We just have to figure out how.
Not so. On Thursday I took the kids to the doctor. My older daughter, we decided, with her consent, would be getting a second chicken pox booster. Chicken pox is spreading around her school, and others, too, in the neighborhood. It’s not just kids whose parents didn’t vaccinate them who are at risk. It turns out that the chicken pox is breaking through the vaccines, and the doctors are suggesting, as the school eventually did, that children get the booster shot, to be extra safe.
Let’s recall that I had the chicken pox in third grade and I still remember it. Of course, I remember it, in part, because I hated school that year, and got to stay home for three weeks. It was itchy, yes, but it came with some benefits.
I’m not always sure how I feel about vaccines. I’ve surprised myself by making more conventional decisions about my children’s health than I would have thought ahead of time. I go to a homeopathic doctor, but I take my girls to the regular old pediatrician’s office. For a time, the office had a nurse practitioner who was also trained homeopathically. She left to start her own office, though, and I stayed. I thought for a moment about not vaccinating; it all sounds so scary when you read the extremist articles about possible mercury poisoning from older-type vaccinations, or the claim that vaccines are linked with autism. In the end, it was scarier to think what would happen to my kids without vaccines, and that was my decision.
The baby was in for her annual checkup, which, silly me, I decided in advance, would be fine. Turns out, though, that the doctor is more than a little concerned that little Amelia isn’t crawling, or walking, or even pointing with gusto. Gross motor skill, apparently, is not her forte. She’s on the very, very slow end of normal, and the doctor, in her calm voice, wants us to get Amelia a full developmental evaluation. She thinks the other skills are fine, cognitively she seems okay, and she’s social, very much so, so the doctor is not worried about autism. Maybe the baby's failure to thrive at six months had a more lasting effect on her muscles. Maybe the muscle tone she lost back then put her behind a few months; she doesn’t seem to have the strength to crawl, or to support herself on her hands and knees. I keep repeating the phrase to myself: failure to thrive, failure to thrive. Six months later, perhaps I'm ready to feel the full import of it's metaphoric power.
Whatever it is, the doctor says to get it checked out. She gives us several phone numbers, one to Childlink, a city agency that provides services to kids, the other to Children’s Hospital.
I call the first and am told to leave a number, they’re busy helping other families, and will return our call later. I call the second, a well-regarded research hospital. The woman who answers tells me it will take a year to get an appointment.
That’s right. One year. In fact, they won’t even give me an appointment. They will only take my contact information and some facts about the baby, and the scheduler will call in a few months to set the date.
Something must be done. It’s not just calling for the appointment. As I told a friend at breakfast this morning, who nodded sagely, it’s calling everyone we know with medical connections and learning the real scoop on how to get an appointment sooner. It's all that extra work to figure out the system. Wish me well. We parents turn fierce when it comes to protecting our little ones, and heaven knows, someone is getting appointments in less than a year's time. We just have to figure out how.