A Love Letter to the Medical Community

You won't see this often from me.  I'm not a fan of the whole white coat deity thing.  I prefer to stay healthy and treat things naturally.  I'd much rather avoid the doctor if at all possible (hence the whole homebirth with midwives thing).

That being said, I completely recognize that there are things beyond the scope of the more natural healing (for instance, the child who got stuck during the first planned homebirth which necessitated a transfer to the hospital and a necessary c-section).

After the youngest was sick for a full week (and the rest all eventually followed, including the herder of the goat rodeo), I realized this was one of those times.

Problem is, it would be impossible to make 5 doctor appointments at once plus it would cost a fortune (my 2 youngest have never been seen by our family doctor and would therefore cost us $150 each just for them to walk in the door, not counting whatever it would cost for the rest of us).  And, with the husband having a new job comes new insurance.  Unfortunately, with new insurance does not always come new cards necessary for using the aforementioned new insurance.

Luckily, the magical mystical cards appeared on Friday.  Unluckily, it was Friday aka You Have Absolutely No Chance Of Seeing The Doctor Today Day.

Saturday comes and we're all still sick.  E. seems to be worse than ever.  So I decide that, after Shabbat, we'll all go to the closest urgent care.  That happened today and all is right with the world.

So, now, without further ado, I present my love letter to the medical community.

Dear Medical Community,

I love you.  I might even go so far as to say I "heart" you and I, as a grown woman, don't "heart" many things.

I admit, I'm not generally your biggest fan.  Your practices often baffle me.  You do things that studies have established are not helpful yet you ignore methods used for generations which are shown to work quite well.  I will, however, admit that there are things for which you are very useful.  Strep is one of those such things.

Today, I paraded the goat rodeo in to the urgent care lobby in all of our germy glory and the office manager's eyes stayed firmly in their sockets.   I was surprised when they didn't bulge out upon our arrival.  When she handed me all 15 forms to fill out (no, I'm not kidding), she even apologized.


Nurse cranky pants, I could have done without you.  I get that weights and blood pressure probably isn't the most exciting thing to be doing on Sunday morning, but there really was no excuse for being quite so rude.  My kids were awesome during all that, by the way, thanks for not noticing.  You were miserable and a bit of a pest.  Thankfully, our time with you was brief.  Here's hoping your day improved.  P.S. If you ever come across that big biker dude nurse who used to work here, tell him, I say, "Hi."  That guy rocked.

Doctor Buffy made up for Nurse Cranky Pants.  She walked into the room and introduced herself not as, "Doctor ....," but simply as "Buffy."  I hope I was able to hide my initial surprise that people outside Joss Whedon's imagination actually name their children such things.  Doctor Vampire Slayer, you were wonderful!  You commented constantly on how well-behaved the kids were and how cute they were (you get bonus points for that).  When you found out I was nursing (which YOU asked.  I didn't have to bring it up.  Thanks for that), you made certain any prescription was safe.  I could have made that easier for you if my copy of Dr. Hale's "Medication and Mothers Milk" hadn't gone for a walk somewhere.  Sorry about that.

While the Volde-Mart pharmacist was useless, you, Walgreens pharmacist, win the gold star award today.  You had the same initial issue as Useless at Volde-Mart, but you, Walgreens pharmacist, went above and beyond to solve it.  It took you ten minutes to sort through what the Death Eater seemed to believe would involve at least two full games of Monopoly worth of time to figure out.  We were able to pick up our prescriptions soon after and only pay a whopping $5 each for the ever-loving elixir of hope.  Thank you, Walgreens pharmacist.  I just about love you right now.  It took everything in my power to resist the urge to kiss you, but, as a friend pointed out, we all have strep, so you probably appreciate a thumbs up from a distance instead.

Now, we've all started on our medication and we're all starting to feel much better.  We can, once again, peek our heads out from behind this curtain of illness go out into the wide wide world.  Oh happy day!  We can leave our home without fear of infecting our dear friends (or hope of infecting our mortal enemies).  I wish that we didn't need to rely on such medications, but we are ever-so-grateful that they are there with their magical powers.


From the bottom of my happy little heart (and unscratchy throat), I thank you.

Sincerely,
Me