Caution: This blog contains TMI

Okay... my pictures refuse to upload, and I'm sort of fried about that anyway, so I've decided to come out of my shell a little and go off on a rant here about the skewed wierdness that is American society...more specifically, American Medical society...

We brought our dog in to get her booster shots this July. She had an ear infection. It was treated. The medication brought on a skin rash. It's being treated. This little series of health problems has resulted in a healthy vet bill (at the very least) and no fewer than 10 phone calls per week about the #$#@$%% dog. Is Chiquita okay? Are you giving her the medicine? Is she still scratching her ass on the wall outside? Could you keep her from doing that? Are you sure you don't want to have her bathed at our facility so that she smells like lavender vanilla instead of her preferred odeur of rancid cabbage dipped in horseshit? I mean, don't get me wrong, she's a sweet companion, a decent if cowardly watch dog and a functional ottoman in the evenings, but, well, she is a dog. And I'm not sure I'd mind all this attention if the phone calls didn't occur when I'm juggling the infant while changing the toddler's diaper (you know those signals that say they're ready to be potty trained? nope...ain't seen a one...) but what really bothers me is that, for every phone call we get about the damned dog, that's three phone calls we don't get from our people doctors but should!

Think about it! I go and drop a 10 lb. human being from the mama-go-boom-box, and a day later they make sure we've got a suitable cargo container for traveling and then cut us loose. Oh yeah, they make us take it back in two weeks to see if it's still breathing, but in the meantime it's you, this wriggling little stranger, the What To Expect books and a holy crapload of shit that can go wrong--including shit happening in your own body. I mean, you get this little piece of paper with things like "If you drop a blood clot larger than a lemon out of your weehoo, go ahead and call us." and some vague stuff about shoving your boob all the way back into it's little gullet during breast feeding, and, voila you're parents. (By the way, folks, that lemon thing actually happened to me, and I did call them, and they told me to wait and see if another one fell out and then we'd do something about it.) My firstborn was born hungry--they're not supposed to be born hungry, you know, they're supposed to work up to it, like they work up to seeing in color, but Trystan was born STARVING--and the little goombah had literally sucked my boobs bloody...I mean, he had blood in his diaper because that was pretty much all the little vampire was getting to eat--and we begged for a two day appointment to see if this whole 'breast feeding' thing was going to work. In the end it did, and thank God for endorphins because Matt said he could always tell when Trystan had stopped playing with his food and settled down to chow because the screaming (my screaming that is) actually stopped, but seriously--we didn't even get a sampler of formula or some damned bag balm because, hell, everybody does it, right?

And it's not like that sense of bewilderment eases with your second child or your third or even your fourth (for all I know the fifth one walks out of the uterus and asks for a menu but somehow I doubt it). Trystan cried a lot because of his disability. We didn't know about the disability when Bryar was born, so imagine our complete horror to discover that the reason she was crying was that she had a double ear infection, which we found out at her well-baby appointment, otherwise we wouldn't ever have known. Kewyn spent a week hooked up to ant-biotics and pulse-ox monitors and scary looking stuff because I'm strep B positive and the labor doc didn't believe me when I said "Admit me now or you won't have time for the anti-biotics." but when they sent us home (with stern admonitions to look for ANY signs of ill health) we could almost HEAR their eyes rolling when we called up the advice nurse if he so much as hiccupped off-key. I swear to the Goddess, I'd give a mucking truckload of wool to have gotten 1/2 the attention for all four newborns as I've gotten this summer for the damned dog.

And as for adult medicine? They lost my IUD today--I mean, not lost it, they hunted down the big phallic ultrasound and showed me a fuzzy picture of it lodged somewhere in my hoo-ha but basically, for all that I didn't really want the damned thing in the first place and it's only an interim deal until our 'other measures' take effect, I am now stuck with it. Oh, sure, my doctor rather sheepishly pledged to rummage around my uterus with a pair of sharp tweezers should I decide I don't want it anymore (I didn't want it now!) but in essence, that puppy is a free agent, appearing or disappearing at will...and I didn't even get a piece of paper or anything to prep me for what could happen with it. When they put it in, I bled like a moose--what's going to happen when they go aerating my privates with those sharp tweezers?

I don't know. All I know is that I get to ring them up when I want to call the whole thing off, and in the meantime, should I sneeze and shoot that thing through my panties and fat-woman's stretch jeans, I promise to yell at the general populace to duck and cover. Hell, it's more of a warning than I've gotten.