Tuesday, September 13, 2011

My Mom/Nurse nose trumps your MD license.

Those of you on Facebook (and really, aren't we all on Facebook?) already know that I've had an...shall we say...interesting afternoon.

Wyatt had a doctors appointment for a check up and his varicella and pertussis boosters today. Nothing out of the ordinary, no big deal, take him in, get it done and move on, right?

Yeah, not so much...

I picked Wy up at school, made the schlep into Kernersville to the pediatricians office and got Wy checked in. We went into the exam room, and Wyatt charmed the nurse and the adorable pint sized PA who examined him. Her name was Sabrina, and she would have fit in my purse, really, she was just cute as a button. She checked him head to toe - eyes, ears, throat, nose, reflexes, had him bend and touch his toes and checked his spine, did the "turn your head and cough", she was VERY thorough. Wyatt is now 4'9" tall and 97lb. At this rate he'll be taller than me by the time he hits 8th grade.

So after tapping his bumpers and kicking his tires, she said he was fine, and that the nurse would be back with his shots in just a minute. We'd been there for a little while and Wy needed to pee, so I sent him across the hall to the bathroom while we waited for the nurse.

Then I heard the words no mother wants to hear from her child as he's coming out of the bathroom.

"Mom, I think you need to take a look at this"

I'm thinking - Oh shit. Do I have to?

But I'm a mom, so of course, I looked.

His pee was the color of cranberry juice.

Now, I've been a nurse for a LOOOOOOONG time, so normally my reaction to things like that is "Hmm. That's interesting. Let me call the doctor." But that's when it's a patient, not my kid.

Now, to my credit, I didn't flip out, I kept my cool, sent Wy back into the exam room, went up to the desk and asked the other PA sitting there for a specimen cup and told him why I needed it.

"Hi, could I have a specimen cup and a cup of water for my son? He just passed blood in his urine and I want to get a sample."

It took a minute to register with him, he did the: oh...Oh..OH! thing and got me the cup and came into the exam room. As we were walking back to the room I started think about the last time this happened, which was when Wy had a strep infection (the same day his father and I went to custody mediation after the piece of garbage and his lovely attorney alleged I had a revolving door on my bedroom and was an unfit mother who didn't feed my kid. But that's a whole other blog.).

OK so last time it was a strep infection, but that couldn't be the case this time, right? I mean, the PA JUST examined him, she'd looked down his throat with her shiny little light, and was inches away from his face. If his throat was irritated she'd have seen it right? She'd at least have smelled it, right?

Just to ease my own mind I took a whiff of Wyatts breath.

Oh.
My.
God.

There was some SERIOUS punky going on there. I know that smell, that was Strep, no doubt about it. The PA from the desk did a culture, we waited, and of course, it was positive.

By then Sabrina had come back in to the exam room. She was very apologetic, which was very sweet, and since I'm all about the advancement of education, I had her take a whiff of Wy's breath, so she'd remember the smell.

So now Wy's home from school tomorrow. The Appendix actually acted like a decent human being and offered to watch Wyatt tomorrow since he's off work and I'm not. ( I know there's something in it for him, he never does anything unless there's something in it for him, but I need to work, so I'm just going to accept the offer and deal with the fallout later).

The one bit of good news from today is that I got a callback for Annie, the play I auditioned for last night. There's a rotten, mean little part of me that's actually thinking that maybe Wyatt breathed on the other women trying out for Miss Hannigan and eliminated my competition. I know, I'm a terrible person.

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