Love turns a blind eye to little annoyances.

With all of our goings-on this past week, I haven’t mentioned that Gracie had her follow-up appointment and a hearing test last Wednesday. I had such high hopes for her. We would go in, her hearing would be as improved as I thought and her eardrum would be intact. Then I could wash my hands of her specialist and she could bathe like a normal kid – with reckless abandon.

 

I should have known better, right? I rescheduled the appointment three different times, and I had it in my mind that it was a morning appointment. The doctor is known to run two hours behind schedule; why, oh why would I schedule an appointment later in the day when his inconsiderate scheduling avalanches into sheer ridiculousness? I wouldn’t! Which is why the robo-message the day before reminding me that Gracie’s appointment with the audiologist was at 2:30 and with Dr. Specialist at 3:00 p.m. kind of threw me off. Oh well, I thought. It’s our last appointment. Maybe it won’t be that bad.

 

Ha. Ha ha ha.

 

After explaining to Gracie that yes, she was going to school in the morning, and no, we didn’t get to sleep in <sigh>, I managed to leave ThePlaceThatShallNotBeDiscussed and get across town to daycare and back across town to the doctor’s office with plenty of time to spare. We walked in, signed her in, and took a quick bathroom break…and we were called right back! Surprise! I was a little disappointed to find out that the audiologist was new; the young lady we usually saw was still there – I saw her – but I guess seeing the same audiologist for one last appointment after three years of working together would have been asking too much. The new audiologist quickly made up for not being who I wanted her to be by letting it slip that Gracie’s ear drum looked intact. Hooray! I was pretty sure that meant the surgery was a complete success, especially when the sophisticated machinery showed two ears full of mountains instead of one (good) ear full of mountains and one (bad) ear full of spaghetti. (It’s complicated, this medical jargon.) Gracie performed a quick hearing test for the audiologist and then we were released back to the waiting room.

 

Ten, twenty, thirty minutes went by. We read books, Gracie people-watched, she played search-and-find with magazines, I cleaned out my text messages. At the forty-minute mark, I walked up to the appointment desk and asked if Dr. Specialist was running behind. The assistant apologized and said that yes, he was running about an hour behind. I was only planning to get an assessment of how long we still had to wait and let them know that yes, we noticed. But I sort of unexpectedly lost my shit. I was polite, but firm, and apologized for unloading on her when she was not responsible, but I made it very clear that I did not appreciate being left waiting for an hour in the waiting room with a four-year-old. I told her that we had been patients for the past three years, and that Dr. Specialist was chronically one to two hours late. I asked why couldn’t they schedule accordingly, or at least call and warn patients ahead of time so that they could work an hour longer when they were trying to stretch ten sick days to cover three people – two of whom were in daycare?! She apologized and related that the assistants were frustrated, too; they had spoken to Dr. Specialist and the Case Manager several times, and both refused to make any changes. She offered to let me speak to the Case Manager, but I declined. I told her I could wait a little longer, but that I found it a little ridiculous that I should have to worry about getting my two-year-old from daycare by 5:30 p.m. when my appointment was at 3:00. She agreed. We waited.

 

And we waited. And waited. Gracie decided she had to use the restroom again. Since I had line of sight and had been there long enough to grow cobwebs know it was vacant, I let her venture into the bathroom by herself. I kept watch on the door the entire time to make sure she wasn’t taking too long and unsuspecting patrons didn’t wander in there unawares. She came back floating on air. Clearly, she was Ms. Thang now. Ten minutes later, she thought she’d try that schtick again. I declined and reminded her she had just gone. “But I have to go poop.” “No.” “But I do!” “No.” Finally, when her intoning of “But I have to go POOOOOP!” was loud enough for people across the waiting room to snicker and look our way, I hissed, “Fine!” and watched her dance to the door. Apparently she can humiliate me into submission. Really, after almost an hour of waiting – after her first appointment – I couldn’t blame her for wanting something new to do.

 

When it hit 4:00 p.m., I walked up to the desk and calmly told the assistant that I was leaving in 30 minutes. We would be happy to be seen by anyone, any other doctor. I didn’t need a consultation, I just needed someone to step into the hall for two minutes and look to see if yes, her eardrum was intact. Either way, I was leaving in thirty minutes, and if I left, we were not coming back. I would assume her eardrum was just fine, because I was past the point of either caring or behaving rationally. Miraculously, we were called back ten minutes later. It only took ten minutes after that for Dr. Specialist to show up. When he apologized, I gave him my Mommy Death Glare.

 

Five minutes. Five minutes was all it took for him to look in her ear and declare it beautifully healed. He was a little concerned that her hearing wasn’t as improved as he would have liked. He suggested an appointment in three months. To my credit, I didn’t reach over and smoosh his tiny little head with my bare hands. I even booked the appointment. We’ll see if I’ve calmed down enough in three months to give him more of my insurance money.

 

But you know what? Gracie never stopped bouncing. She was so happy about the possibility of being able to splash again that she just beamed from perfect ear to perfect ear. She didn’t care that we had just wasted several hours of our lives. She didn’t care about mountains or spaghetti or what-in-the-world is WRONG with doctors these days. “Bee, I can splash! I can splash in our bath and we can take a bath TOGETHER again, Bee!” she exclaimed, when we picked up her sister a little later. She was caught up in her happiness that her ear was all better. I think we could all learn a lesson from her.

 

Happy Love Thursday, everyone. May you find love and happiness in the things that matter, and let them help you turn a blind eye to the bumps in the road on your journey.

Tags: children, health, Love Thursday, surgery