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September 24, 2003
Before reading further, you should know that in Russia, it's quite usual for pediatric doctors to come to the child's home. We have insurance through which almost all doctors, from ENTs to neurologists, to orthopeds (is that a word in English?), come to us. Only for problems that can't be handled at home do we have to take the kids to a clinic or hospital. Their medical records are kept at home.
Last week, Anna came down with a nasty cold. Nothing strange about that, considering half the population is sneezing, coughing and otherwise filling the air with unfriendly microbes. By Tuesday, the cold had developed into an ear infection and it was time to call the doctor, who came and went, leaving us with a prescription for amoxicillin and assorted ear drops, nasal sprays and cough syrups.
Wednesday night, my mum flew in from Great Britain for her annual 4-day visit. My mum (hope she's not reading this), is not a big fan of real life babies and children. She likes to admire them from afar, see their photos, hear stories about them, buy them beautiful clothes, but actual noisy energetic, and in this case, sick little kids that you have to actually play with, whose runny noses you have to wipe and potties you have to clean, nope, that's not her cup of tea. She tries, but it's forced. And she is always upset that when I am home and the kids are awake, they are the center of my attention, the apple of my eye. Maybe it's because I work outside the home and really don't see them all that much: mornings, for an hour in the evenings between the time I get home and they go to bed, and weekends. My mum thinks it's wrong to let the kids take over our lives.
But I have digressed from the main topic of this entry: medicine. By Saturday, Andrei had the cold, minus the ear infection. Unlike Anna, it didn't really affect his energy level or his mood, but because of last year's ear infection disaster- four ear infections in six months - I was doing everything I could to prevent it from getting worse.
Yesterday the ENT doctor came by to check both of the kids out. She gave them a clean bill of health, congratulated me on performing such good treatment on Andrei, and while she was entering her conclusions into the kids' medical records, Anna and Andrei began to race around the apartment like monkeys on amphetamines. Having been cooped up for days had taken its toll. They were feeling well and they wanted OUT. Their antics ended in minor catastrophe when, slapstick style, they slammed into each other at full speed and flew backward in opposite directions. Andrei somehow managed to gash the back of his head on something as he went down, and on further examination, which the still-present ENT conducted, it was decided that we needed a trip to the hospital for some stitches.
Andrei amazed me. Usually, he's a real screamer, but he didn't even let out so much as a peep when they were sewing him up. I was standing outside the door (they don't let parents in, for reasons of sterility) waiting for the blood-curdling yells, but only silence. He came out with a proud look on his face and a huge white bandage on his head.
I took him to McDonalds (first time ever) as a treat, since we'd missed lunch, and he really enjoyed it. He'd never had fries before, and had a great time dipping them in his ice-cream sundae. Hey, if that's the way he likes his fries, why not!
As an aside, a couple of months ago, also in the doctor's presence, Anna face-planted and cut open her eyebrow, requiring butterfly stitches. It's a good thing (at least until she's a teenager and wants to tweeze) that she has my big fuzzy caterpillar eybrows.
I'm very calm about injuries, having been stitched up numerous times myself, it's the illnesses that freak me out. When I was in Grade 5, I spent all my recesses and lunchtimes in the school library reading medical encyclopedias. The summer of that year I declined to play outside, preferring to hang out in my room with the Merck Index and similar tomes. I "normalled" out in Grade 6, but to this day, have a serious case of 3rd year med student syndrome. You know, when you think you have every disease in the book. In other words, I am a hypochondriac. Big time. And now that I have a husband and kids, I have three other people's mortality to obsess about.
***Pregnancy***
Well, due to all the commotion with the illnesses, injuries and my mum, I'd kind of "forgotten" I'm pregnant. I'm 10 weeks pregnant, and since I'd been having some spotting, they did an ultrasound at my 8-week appointment. They'd first tried to find the heartbeat on a Doppler, thinking that since I am skinny, they might get it early, but nope, it was upstairs for the lovely "invasive" vaginal ultrasound. Everything looked fine.
I *think* the morning sickness is going away, but I've been having lots of stomach problems. Perhaps it's because I've had dysentery twice and there's some permanent damage in my intestinal tract. The other night I woke up with cramps so bad, I though I was going to have to go to emergency if they didn't go away. I drank down some "Espumizan" (it's like Mylicon), and they went away. I suppose it's the growing uterus playing havoc on my digestive system, but since the last pregnancy involved an emergency appendectomy (aren't they always an emergency?) and a hard to treat strain of dysentery, I'm in touch with every twang down there.
The main thing now is to never ever lie down unless I'm not planning on getting up until morning. I feel like a giant three-toed sloth. Unfortunately, I have the lifestyle of a hummingbird, requiring me to be almost constantly active.
Warm regards from the autumnal North,
Lisa
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