It’s 4:30 in the morning; I’ve been up since 3:30. This is happening almost every night: I wake up queasy and restless and uncomfortable and the wrong temperature, and can’t go back to sleep. This particular night, I have the additional keep-me-up of feeling like a prime idiot for once again practically kissing a doctor’s sandals for giving me what I think was a wrong and inappropriately dismissive diagnosis.
For the last few days, I’ve been running a fever on and off. The highest it’s been is 99.9, so I’m not exactly combusting here, but when the fever is “on” I feel so awful I can’t even describe it. I feel as if I’m dying, or as if I’d like to. I can barely walk or move, but sitting/lying still doesn’t help either. I feel like I can’t lift the babies, or change their diapers, or comb my hair, or swallow food. AWFUL, is what I’m saying here. Also, I have a gunky cough, and when I breathe in my lungs feel sore.
I went to my primary care physician’s office, confident I’d be walking away with an antibiotic. They made me see the nurse-practitioner, which is standard for this stupid office: the actual doctors have 3-month waits for appointments. His diagnosis? Probably a cold. Just keep taking Tylenol every six hours. His attitude was dismissive and amused, like I was some silly pregnant woman wasting his time. He noticed that Elizabeth was coughing, and I said, “Yes, we’ve had a cold going through our house,” and he said, “Well, guess what?”–meaning DUH, lady, you have that cold too, you didn’t need a DOCTOR VISIT to tell you that.
As I understand it, though, a CHILD might get a fever from a cold, but adults usually do not. In an adult, a fever is usually a good sign that something is wrong. And in a pregnant adult, I don’t think I’d take a chance on that, if I were a doctor: infections can be serious, serious things.
I can’t believe he sent me away as if I were just there for fun, maybe trying to score some “good stuff” antibiotics. It is no small feat for me to get to a doctor appointment: I have to schedule it around a 2nd grader and a kindergartner’s schedules, and I have to bring the twins with me in their ginormous stroller that barely wedges into the exam room, and the twins have to miss all or part of their nap. I don’t go in until I am so worried about my health, I’m starting to wring my hands and hyperventilate and imagine scenarios where the last-rites priest says, “But why didn’t you call the doctor sooner?” A brief glance at my medical records should show that almost every single time I come in, it’s something that requires medical attention–and on the few occasions I’ve gone out of there without medication, I’ve been back a week later and they’ve given it to me that time, finally willing to concede that I have, for one memorable example, pneumonia.
What I really can’t believe is that I said not one word of this to the nurse-practitioner. I said “okay.” I thanked him. I’m completely responsible for the well-being of a child living inside my own personal body, and I have a fever, and I feel so bad I have WISHED FOR DEATH, and I thanked him and paid my co-pay and didn’t even argue a little. Okay, I argued a teeny bit: I said I was worried about the fever, because I knew pregnant women shouldn’t have fevers. He gave another dismissive look/sound/gesture and said, “Well, sure, if you were running a constant 102 that would be another matter.” Me: “Okay! Thank you!”
In part, I blame my mother, who reared me with such a deeply respectful attitude toward authority, I have been unable to break that attitude even when a break is richly, richly called for. But in addition to the nurture, it is my own shy, fearful, confrontation-hating nature that turns against me. If only there were a medication for THAT.
