The Week of Doctors

Sometimes it feels like all I do is drive around in the car. Tuesday: A at the dentist. Wednesday morning: me at the OB with A in tow; Wednesday after noon: me at the dentist without A, thank God. Thursday morning: me at the hospital filling out pre-admittance paperwork to L&D; Thursday afternoon: A gets an H1N1 flu shot.

Let me just say that while I love the doctors in A's pediatrician office, I hate the office staff. It's like going to an office run by the Marx Brothers, but less funny.

First of all, they super-overbooked. There was no parking available and I had to park two blocks away at Bread & Cie, which made me late. There were thirty people (not including two small babies) in a waiting room that normally holds ten. That's its own little level of hell.

And gentlemen, yes, you with the penises? Stand the hell up for ladies when there aren't enough seats. That's your job. I don't care about feminism; I don't care that your wife's happy to stand while you sit. The mommy who just came in with the seven-month-old needs a place to sit while she nurses. When I'm thirty-five-weeks pregnant and seriously considering giving her my seat, that's your cue to be a man and get off your ass and on your feet.

I had to have a run-around discussion about whether or not A needed the injectable vaccine or the Flu Mist with the nurse. It's not like this is the place that told me that yes, he needed an injectable and yes, they had the injectable available when I called.

"We don't have any more big kid-sized doses of the injectable. He'd have to have two shots if you don't want him to have the inhaled because we only have the baby doses left."

"Well, he's asthmatic and has been hospitalized this year and can't have the flu mist so I guess you'd better get the two shots ready."

"It's still going to be two shots."

"Look, go get Dr. ----- or Dr. ----- and I'm sure all of them will tell you he needs the injectable. Because I'm not letting you give him the live virus Flu Mist and he's not leaving here without a vaccination. Okay?"

She brings in a tray with the two shots and sets it down within arm's reach of A on his eye level, which no nurse has ever done before and freaks him out completely, then waits for me to calm him down so she can give him the shot. She offers him two toys from the treasure chest when he's done.

Anticipation is worse than having the shots. He's wriggly and it's not like I've got a lot of lap to hold him on right now to take a shot. But she did the shots quickly and he cried more before getting the shots than after he'd gotten them.

In doctor's visit news, I'm fine. Baby's on track. The hospital looks, well, like a hospital but the people were friendly enough.

The bad news: most hospitals in San Diego, including the one I'm set to deliver in, have banned all children under 14. When I went to the hospital to do paperwork, the entrance is cordoned off and there's a security guy having people fill out a brief questionnaire: Do you have a fever, a cough that's developed in the last three days, body aches, chills, nausea/vomiting/etc., and are you here with anyone under 14 who is not here for their own appointment or treatment?

So now I'm sad because A won't be able to come visit me and meet the new baby in the hospital. I'm sure we'll of course beg for an exemption and have it not be granted. I'm really sad about it. I feel even more pressure to have a successful VBAC, just because it'll cut down on the time spent in the hospital. With a vaginal delivery, I could be home the next day; I know a C-section is a good--ahem, minimum--two or three days at least (last time, four). Grumble grumble grumble. Maybe they'll have lifted the restrictions by then, but I doubt it.

Flu shot success!

I did get my rock-star mommyness on; I got A an appointment at his doctor's for a seasonal flu shot (independent of the H1N1 vaccine), and he got it today.

He took it like a champ. The doctor's office was backed up with people getting flu shots. Crazy. But he got his injectable vaccine and I got his vaccination record updated and we're all set on seasonal flu vaccines in our household.

Next stop: H1N1 vaccines.

There's a lot of crazy out there on the tubes, as we like to call the Internet around here in honor of the former senator from Alaska, namely in the anti-vaccine movement.

Repeat after me: correlation does not equal causation. Equating correlation with causation in lieu of scientific evidence is how superstitions get started.

I'm not as hard-core about the H1N1, but the anti-vaccine rhetoric for all the standard bad diseases drives me batty. I know how long doctors went to school and that as many hours as I spend watching House, I am not a doctor. So if my doctor recommends something and the CDC, the WHO, and everyone with a medical degree under the sun seems to back her up, then yeah, vaccines are super.

I wouldn't mind it if the anti-vaccine people were only hurting themselves (I'm not so keen on them hurting their own kids, but I'm willing to take that as Darwin at work). But when someone else decides that their kid should experience the measles instead of getting the MMR vaccine because the MMR vaccine "causes" autism, they've become a public health risk to my family. Measles is communicable by air; you can get it by being in the same place an infected person was within the last two hours.

If this seems like a far-out situation, there was a measles outbreak here last year where there were contagious people in my local Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Eleven kids got it, some of them infants who needed to be hospitalized. Some seventy kids in total ended up being quarantined, either because their parents chose not to vaccinate them or they were too young to be vaccinated. I imagine it's super fun to be stuck in your house with a kid for two weeks.

So when you're Googling vaccines to "educate" yourself, take a minute and Google the pre-vaccination mortality rates of those diseases. Google the side effects of the vaccines, and then Google the effects of the diseases.

Then the next time you see a cute little three-month-old shopping with his or her parents in Trader Joe's, think about giving those diseases to that baby, because by not vaccinating your kid, you've made a choice to give that baby that disease too.