A Trip to the Doctor

I took my son to the doctor the other day for his one year checkup. As an aside, when you tell people you're taking your son to the doctor, they become very concerned. This is odd to me, because there are mandatory checkups every three months for all humans for the first year (or two?) of their lives.

"I'm taking Little Man to the Doctor, I'll be back in two hours."

"Oh no, I hope nothing's wrong."

"Thanks for the concern, but I'm really just going to be told I'm a bad parent."

And that's the second thing that is odd to me about these mandatory young person checkups. My wife came back from Rudy's nine-month checkup convinced we were failing as parents.

"They gave me a questionnaire to fill out about his development, and he's behind!"

"Oh my God. Really?! What? Where? How?"

"There were just a bunch of things that he's supposed to be able to do, but he can't do them." She hands me a three page document with a series of yes or no questions.

Question 1: If you ask your child how big he is, does he raise his arms to show you "Sooooo big"?

Answer: No.

Here's the thing though, no one told us he would be graded on this ability. I had no idea I was supposed to be teaching him this. For the first nine months of his life, I was trying to get my son to sit up, crawl, and walk. I didn't even know "Soooooo big" was a thing.

The questions go on.

Question 27: Does your child call you 'mama' or 'dada'?

Answer: No.

"That can't be indicative of a problem," I say. We've got three nephews, all older than our son, and none of them said shit when they were nine months old. And they're all smart as whips now.

Since I hadn't been at the six- or nine-month appointments, I couldn't really gauge how much my wife was reading into the doctor's tone. Maybe something was just being lost in translation. "For the one-year checkup, I'm going," I decide. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this."

So I go. And it's really hard not to feel like a terrible parent when your doctor is asking you questions where you would be a terrible parent if the answer was no.

"Do you have electrical outlets covered in your home?"

"Do you have smoke alarms?"

"Do you feed your child breakfast?"

Do you have to ask? Jesus. I think the Doctor's office is mostly about making you feel like a bad parent and telling you that your child has an enormous head. Those seem to be the prevailing themes.

"So your son's weight remains in the 90th percentile, while his height remains in the 10th percentile. That's mildly concerning. Also, his head remains off the charts. It is really huge. There's just no science behind the size of this boy's head."

I blame my father.

As the shaming is wrapping up, the doctor starts running through our vaccination options. She's throwing all kinds of shit out there. Hepatitis this. Influenza that. This one we do because of this reason, even though it's not really likely he'll get it, and it's probably not needed.

Call me neglectful, but I don't care. Give him everything. I'm all for being an informed consumer. And I'm pretty cynical of the relationship between doctor's and drug companies. And I think it's more than ridiculous that healthcare is an industry rather than a right. But I also pretty much think that doctors, like teachers, should do what's best in their professional opinions. If he shouldn't get a vaccine, the doctor wouldn't ask.

"Yup," I tell the doctor. And like that, I've signed my son up for four shots.

This is where the doctor's visit becomes really interesting to me. Because as I'm holding down my son while a strange woman sticks a sharp needle an inch into his three-inch thick legs, the ridiculousness of this situation dawns on me. His face goes from oblivious smiling to red-faced full force screaming in an instant. His calm body becomes one giant muscle, contracting and writhing to get away.

Get away from what? He doesn't even know. He has no idea what's going on. All he knows is that something that hurt just happened, with no ability to comprehend why.

And he trusts me. He loves me. He needs me. He is fully dependent on me and my wife, and has been since that first terrifying day when he came out of total warmth and darkness into a bright cold world. Total shock to the senses. And since then, we've fed him. We've clothed him. We've wiped poo off of his ass and genitalia. We've put ointments on his asshole. Not his ass cheeks. Literally, his asshole. We've plugged electrical outlets, provided smoke alarms, AND we feed him breakfast.

He completely trusts us.

And we did this to him.

Trying to understand what this would be like, all I can imagine is a scenario where my dad tells me we're going to go golfing, but then before we get to the golf course, my dad says we've got to make a side stop.

He pulls the car over next to an office building, and tells me in an excited voice that we're going to stop and see one of his old friends.

"Oh, okay," I think. "That's strange. But it seems harmless. I'm actually intrigued by the whole thing. Who is this friend? What is this office building? Why are we stopping right now? Seems like a mild adventure."

We go into the office and are greeted by a receptionist. She tells us to wait. After a few minutes, they call us into a back room.

My dad and I talk about the Blackhawks, the golf we're going to play, and what it's like raising a child. Eventually, a stranger enters the room.

My dad greets the stranger like a friend. He introduces us. The two of them banter back and forth for five or ten minutes. I can hear and understand the words that they're saying, but a lot of the meaning is lost. They're talking about events and places that I don't know. They use people's names as shorthand for whole paragraphs.

"That's a typical Jack McDonald move." One of them says.

"Yes, very Jack McDonald." The other responds.

They laugh. And I smile and kind of laugh with them. I don't know what they're saying, but I'm laughing along because it's uncomfortable not to. Then I start to think about how people do that: laugh when others are laughing. It occurs to me that this is funny as well. And now I'm genuinely laughing about this odd human behavior.

And that's when I am blind-sided with total searing pain. Searing pain and a loud pop.

I clutch my leg, and scream out. "Ah! Jesus, shit. What the fuck!" My eyes are closed tightly shut.

"It's okay. It's okay." My father is telling me calmly, as he rubs my shoulders. I start to open my eyes.

I look down and realize that my father's friend had pulled out a gun and shot me in the leg. I now know what it's like to be shot. It hurts like hell. Just as I'm starting to process this, I register the old friend looking at the barrel of the gun, held up right in his right hand. He's inspecting it kind of. The tip of the barrel.

"Once more," he says matter of factly. Then he points the barrel back at me and--

BANG!

Now the pain is in my other leg. "AHHHHHHHHH!!! What the fuck! You MOTHERFUCKER!!!"

"It's okay. You're okay, little man." My dad continues.

"You motherfucker! Why did you let him do this to me? What do you mean 'you're okay'? I trusted you!"

"Awwww, poor guy. I know. I know."

"You know? You know my ass."

BANG!

"JESUS! He did it again!"

"It's almost over," says the stranger. "You're being so brave."

"Why did it even begin? Why isn't it over already?!"

"Last one..."

BANG

"AAARRRGH!!!"

"Oh, buddy," my dad tells me.



I think what I'm saying is that I'm going to make my wife take Rudy to the doctor from now on.