My eight year old came down the stairs saying she didn’t feel well the other morning. Now, as a father of five, I’ve grown to view claims of sickness with…shall we say…a fair amount of wariness.
My seven year old comes down the stairs every single morning like the wounded hero at the end of an epic action movie. She’s limping. Her hair is in her eyes. Her hand is on her stomach and she’s groaning but carrying bravely on towards her waffle on the kitchen table. And each morning she has an impressively varied list of maladies for someone so young. One morning she actually said her knuckles hurt. I almost let her stay home just to award points for originality. Except not.
It’s gotten so comical that my other children now will sometimes come down the stairs doing imitations of the seven year old with a little extra melodrama thrown in for comedic effect.
But anyway, this was my eight year old saying she didn’t feel well and she never says she’s sick. And one look at her face and I could tell she was ill. Her face was pale, her cheeks were bright red, and her eyes were glassy. I told her to lie on the couch while I got the others ready. She even refused her waffle. That’s how I really knew things were bad.
Unfortunately, she had to ride with us to school but when we got home she immediately crashed on the couch. Poor thing. I checked her temperature and it was 102 degrees.
So at nine o’clock sharp I called the doctor. I got the answering machine and I didn’t think it was an emergency so I just left a message. Around ten thirty I started getting my dander up a bit because I hadn’t gotten a call back.
At 11:30 I called the doctor again. And yeah, I pressed the option for emergencies. And what did I get? The same stinking message I’d gotten last time. Some emergency number!?
I fed the four year old and the two year old lunch. I didn’t wake the eight year old because I figured sleep was what she needed most. As you can imagine, keeping the four year old and the two year old away from the sleeping sick girl wasn’t easy. I was like a rodeo clown waving action figures or snacks at them to try to get them to follow me out of the room.
By 1 pm. I was mad. By 1:15 I qualified for ticked off.
Finally at 1:30 I got the call back from the doctor’s office. And I started calmly. “My eight year old woke up this…”
“Date of birth?” the male nurse interrupts me with that tone that says “you’re my 165th call of the day and you’re probably the least important.” Mind you, this doctor has been great over the years. At one point during a particularly serious illness by one of my children she’d actually given us her home phone number so I didn’t blame her. But I could tell I didn’t like this new nurse. Not even a little.
I started telling him what was wrong and he does it again. He interrupts me. This time he’s asking for the spelling of my daughter’s name. OK. I tell him how to spell her name and I immediately segue into how my eight year old woke up with a fever and her cheeks were very red and she said her stomach was hurting her…
“Uhm, Mr. Archbold is this your first?”
“First? First what?” I asked.
“Is this your first child?” he says snippily.
Now I despise this question. This question is essentially asking “You have no idea what you’re talking about, right?”
So now my anger is reaching Chernobyl levels. I passed high dudgeon a few dudgeons ago. “No sir. I have five children.” Now, I tried hard to keep it together but I didn’t. Not even close. “Listen, I think I know when my child is sick. And I don’t appreciate you thinking right away that I’m overreacting. I’m here. I’m looking at my child and I know when she is sick. You, not being here, are just going to have to take my word for it. And I don’t appreciate at all not getting called back for six hours from my child’s doctor.”
Silence.
“Uhm. When was the last time you took her temperature?” he asked.
“I’ll take it right now,” I say huffily. Oh yeah, I brought the huff.
So I got the thermometer out and I walked out of the kitchen towards the couch when I look up and there’s my eight year old looking at me all bright eyed and bushy tailed.
Uh-oh.
As I stuck the thermometer in her ear she smiled at me.
Oh no. 98.4. I try again. 98.8. Darn!!! I hesitatingly tell the nurse that she’s not running a temperature RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND BUT BEFORE IT WAS VERY….
“Sir, how is she feeling now?” he interrupts again.
I ask my eight year old how she’s feeling and she practically screams out that she’s completely all better and perfect so that the doctor’s office next door to our doctor could’ve heard. She then stands up off the couch and screams “See! I’m all better!”
Silence.
And you know what this father thought. I thought “Darn! Why’d she have to be all better now?” Yeah. I’m not saying it was a good thought but it’s what I thought.
I practically heard the nurse cluck at me in victory. Yes. He clucked! I imagined him doing a touchdown dance. I thought I heard him moonwalking in his crocks and spiking the phone at one point.
“So I guess we’re all better then, right?” he said solicitously as if now he was Mother Teresa. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“No,” I said. I thought about telling him about her very very very high temperature earlier but at that point I was looking for an exit strategy.
When I hung up the phone I knew that he was rolling his eyes about me.
But hey, at least my eight year old wasn’t feeling sick anymore. Darn her! She looked up at me, smiled, and sweetly asked if she could please have her waffle from this morning. I told her the two year old ate it. I spiked the thermometer and moonwalked into the kitchen. Not really. I made her a fresh waffle. But then I allowed the two year old and the four year old to maul her.
April 5, 2010 at 8:48 am
This made me smile… a lot. Although my daughter is only 2 mos… I can for sure see myself in that very situation in the not too distant future.
I probably will resort to tickling as punishment for getting my ego bruised though 🙂
April 5, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Oh, Matt. When I started reading this, I was snickering the whole way, just waiting for the end. We have 6 and our oldest is 2 weeks shy of 18. Oh, how we have learned about the mysterious disappearing fever. I've been on your end more times than I can count. But now, I am oh so experienced. My mother, a former nurse and professional hypochondriac, actually HATES me. These days my children would probably have to show signs of actual human combustion before I'd take them to the Dr. for a fever. In fact, I just had a knock down drag out with the schools because, after 3 days of the flu and being at home, they INSISTED that I take the children to the Dr. for an "all better" excuse. Ugh. Nope, that Dr. won't get a cent from me unless it's really serious. So hang in there Matt–you'll soon learn how to wait it out for 2 or 3 days. LOL.
April 5, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Matt, I can't count how many times this has happened to me! I'm beginning to think phone calls actually cure fevers!
April 5, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Too funny, Matt. When it's your child, you think all the worse things–"Oh my gosh, she has spinal meningitis, I just know it!" If it's someone else's kid, you know it's just a 24 hour bug.
April 5, 2010 at 2:25 pm
One of my children's pediatricians said there was something magical about the air in the elevator that cured children on the way up to the doctor's office. It happpens to all of us and the doctors know it.
April 5, 2010 at 2:26 pm
I laughed all the way through, practically knowing the outcome before I read it. I, too, have five and we get this scenario quite a bit. I'm just glad our thermometer has a memory because otherwise, my husband would probably never believe me that one of the kids had a 102 temp that morning.
April 5, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Oh man. I so know this world. However, recently I've run into the opposite problem. If I call, there's one nurse who presumes because I have a lot of kids, if I'm phoning, it's possible hospitization time rather than doctor's visit time.
April 5, 2010 at 2:40 pm
The Great Disappearing Fever/Illness is the bane of all stay-at-home parents. Just got to offer it up for the suffering souls when you come out looking the fool.
As for the jerk on the phone, my RN wife tells me there are two kinds of MALE nurses; gay and weird. So that particular clown has more problems than you'll ever see.
April 5, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Hilarious! It's nice to hear from a dad who, like me, has lost his cool with the doctor's office. I'm with all the other commenters here on the mystery of the Great Disappearing Fever and all the trouble it causes! Been there soooo many times!
This must be why the doctor doesn't bother calling back.
Glad the 8 yr-old is feeling perky again.
April 5, 2010 at 4:07 pm
We've had the disappearing fever thing, but haven't had the rude nurse problem. Regardless of the resulting situation, you should have received prompt and professional service, not a 6 hour delay before receiving rude treatment. I'd complain to the doctor's office, were I you.
For one daughter I don't care about rude nurses or disappearing fevers, or "wasted" doctor's visits. With her medical history (micropreemie, multiple hospital stays, compromised lungs, etc.) I'd rather err on the side of caution and I really don't care what anyone thinks. Their job is to check my child and make sure she's healthy, not pass judgement on how "panicky" I may be.
April 5, 2010 at 5:16 pm
@Subvet –
My Dad retired as an RN after many years of serving the sickest of the sick both at home and in Iraq. A good friend of mine with 4 children and one on the way is a good Catholic that left a lucrative career to serve God's people.
Neither of these men is gay or weird. If we decide that a group of people is gay/weird, maybe that's all we will see instead of real people.
April 5, 2010 at 5:53 pm
I have worked with a good number of male nurses. Sure, some are gay and some are weird. But I know female nurses in both those categories also. I also know some terrific male nurses. Including one of the gay ones
I had a wonderful family practice doctor who always called me back and never even hinted that I shouldn't have called. He told me "I am a doctor and my wife is a nurse, and there are many times when we are not sure if we should call the doctor for our children."
I had one of those melodramatic kids also. So much so, that when she fell, and complained about pain in her shoulder, we said, Yeah Meg right. And when she went to school the next day and she couldn't walk on her hands in gym and was sent to the school nurse, the school nurse said, "Meg, there is nothing wrong with you." So, the next morning she wakes up, and her entire left arm is white and cool, distinctly different from the other arm. So I take her in, she gets X rayed, and she has a broken collarbone, which apparently was pinching a nerve and squeezing a blood vessel. Moral of the story; even hypochondriacs sometimes get sick or hurt.
As for the disappearing fever, she probably was sick and shouldn't have gone to school. Healthy kids just fight off minor illnesses really fast.
Susan Peterson
April 5, 2010 at 6:35 pm
It reminded me of how I felt when Stupak anounced that Obama will sign an order prohibiting federal funding of abortion in Obamacare.
April 5, 2010 at 7:28 pm
haha, of course!
That tone of voice though- a story from my mom can, I think, top it. My mom has small veins and tried to explain to a nurse in obstetrics that she needed a pediatric needle for the IV when she was in labor. The nurse didn't listen and messed around so much that my mom was on the verge of passing out before she finally got it in.
Later on, she told my mom, "You were just nervous." This was child (and childbirth) number five.
April 5, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Nzie, sounds like she needed a note from her doctor for her doctor!
April 6, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Hahahah! Too funny! The benefit of homeschooling: you don't have to worry about sick days. As soon as they wake up on the couch in that frame of mind it's time for Vocab! Hahahahah!
Don't take this the wrong way Matt, but I used to feign illnesses in school when I was young because I had serious problems with the girls in my class. I used to try and stay home at least once a week. You might want to talk to her about it and get a feel for how she's doing socially? Just a thought…
April 6, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Hey, Subvet: Tell your RN wife she just threw my husband into the sweeping generalization stew of "gay or weird" male nurses. Thanks!
*MY* male nurse husband actually happens to be a Navy Sub Vet (you, too?), a black belt in tae kwon do, and an all-around man's man. Epitome of tact and discretion on the phone, ta boot.
April 6, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Early on in the article, the author mentions his "seven-year-old (who) comes down the stairs every single morning like the wounded hero at the end of an epic action movie . . ."
Is that typical behavior for an otherwise happy, well-adjusted seven-year-old who is enjoying school and is getting along well with most of the other children?
I ask because my twelve-year-old brother started faking sick every day. Turned out some bullies were beating him up after school every day. I don't know why he didn't tell at home, but he didn't feel he could tell for whatever reason. So he faked sick. Kids can have funny ways of handling their problems.
Which is, I guess, part of what adults are there for.
Anyway, I wish my folks had tried to get to the bottom of whatever might have been bothering him. So does he.
April 7, 2010 at 7:24 pm
I'm impressed you were able to type this whole thing out while you were two inches tall. 😉