Dr. Magoo

Anyone who knows me, knows that I recently visited my family and friends in California. Of course it was a trip anxiously anticipated by Cookie. A visit to Nana, playing with Slugger (Nana's dog), seeing the cousins, and a visit to Sea World. Hubby loves this annual trip because he gets a break from it all. The wife, the kids, and for the most part work. He gets to hang with his best bud and detox from the craziness that is our home. I get to see my friends and family, and get a little break with some help from Mom. Or that was the plan. On this trip my poor little babies both got sick this vacation.

Normally Cookie getting sick does not cause me much concern, other than the normal feel really bad for her and horrible that I can't do much to make it go away. But with the swine flu going around I was more worried than normal. I have a firm belief that if Cookie was to get the H1N1, she would weather it just fine. It is Jelly Bean that worries me the most, being so little.
So normally I would not panic. However, things were different.

1. I was not at home, near my doctor, who knows my kids.
2. My husband was not there to keep me sane. I mean he was a phone call away and would have come if I really needed him, but not having him there at two a.m. when Cookie is crying and holding her head while Jelly Bean wakes up was stressful.
3. I had my Mom feeding the panic. In her defense the memory of a 3 day hospital stay for my brother when he was three and had the croup trumps all sense of calm.
4. I had all of these horrible visions of not being able to get home or take Cookie to Sea World like we had promised.

So, I ended up taking the kids to my Mom's doctor's office, on two different occasions. The group has two pediatricians. On the first visit, Cookie was "ill". Of course she makes a total liar out of me, her fever by ten a.m. had gone down to 100 and she was dancing and singing. The doctor she saw seemed competent enough. He reminded me of a cartoon character with a bushy moustache. For some reason I kept picturing Sylvester the Cat. He made Donald Duck sounds and bird noises. Diagnosis, Charlotte was fine, had a bug or something. His answer, give me the H1N1 vaccine so Jelly could get the immunities through me. Okay, positive note, score one more vaccine for Colorado, one less for California.

Three days later Jelly Bean came down with the bug. another sleepless night and a return to the doctor's office. This time we see the other doctor. I will refer to him as Dr. Magoo. His nurse wrote everything down on a Post It. And when Dr. Magoo deemed to lumber into the room, he really had no clue whom he was seeing. I told him Jelly Bean's symptoms, which were far worse than Cookie's were. He kept referring to her as "Baby". "Ohhh hello Baby," he addressed her and then proceeded to almost drop her! Hubby and I kept looking at each other with the questioning look, "did he just drop our baby?" We left very confused, $30 lighter, and not really sure whether or not to trust Dr. Magoo's diagnosis of, "it's not the Swine flu."

Our little trip made me really appreciate our doctor, her nurses, and her staff. Jelly is still congested and has since seen our doctor, giving me the relief I was looking for.