Suddenly *Not So* Single Journey

Next time, I’m taking valium first…

Author: thenicknick

So, I knew to an extent what I was in for.  I mean, Rachel has never been particularly fond of physicians.  And with age and the growing testing, her opinion on that subject has not exactly improved.  Worse, ever since the photography incident of ‘99, she has grown ever increasingly power hungry.

See, Rachel, who loves to make this horrible smile when she’s faking it, a folding back her lips over her teeth kind of smile, convinced the photographer that I was making her nervous and had me removed from the room.  Yup.  That was Rachel at age five.  And, it hasn’t much improved.

Now imagine us today.  Ten years later.  She’s fifteen.  And she’s really good at it.  Before leaving the house she’s swearing she refuses to have any shots.  And I’m swearing that if she needs them, she’ll take them.

I did everything I could think of to joke with her and break the ice.

me: Now if you’re a good girl, after the doctor, I’ll give you a Tic Tac.

Well, we arrive and the attitude starts IMMEDIATELY.  She refuses to let me sit near her.  I tend to pick my battles, so I sat…as close as I dared…a few seats over.

me: (upon seeing a teenage boy enter with his father)  I bet they sit together.

Rachel: Well, if they do, it’s because his father is way cooler than you.

me: Naturally.

And then I spot this young child who is there for an appointment.  She seems to be doing well.  She’s sitting with her mother and playing around and everything.  For a moment, I pondered having her talk to Rachel, with the old ‘look how young she is and she’s not scared’ routine.  Then, I realized that given Rachel’s powers of persuasion, that could go horribly wrong and soon we’d have two scared kids.

Finally it was our turn.  And Rachel is actually crying as we enter the hall.  She doesn’t want to stand on the scale.

me: Yeah.  Take off the Berks.  We wouldn’t want the extra weight.

Rachel: Thanks for the chicken, mom.

me: You’re welcome.

Then it’s on to the height.

me: Keep those Berks off.  We want an accurate height.

(She’s still five inches taller than me.)

me: Huh.  You’d think that it would take a bigger body to contain all that ‘tude.

Rachel just growled.  By now she was having her temperature taken.

Nurse: She’s normal.

Rachel and I stare at each other.

me: Hah!  That’s what you think.

That’s about where we peaked.  Soon, she was trying to get me kicked out of the room while she talked to the doctor.  Oh, my power hungry teen.  And then the doctor told me I could go back in.

me: Do I have to?

The shot was next.  It was the gardisil.  I know it isn’t mandatory, but if I could have taken a shot to prevent a horrible disease like cervical cancer, I would have taken it.  Alas, the cut off is age twenty-five.  I just missed it.

And this was where I was ready to KILL her.  She wouldn’t sit still.  I’ve heard of dry heaves, but I was witnessing dry sobs.  She was shaking and shuddering and pulling away.  (And we have to go back in November and March to get the follow up shots in the series.  Can’t wait.)

Nurse: I’m going to have to call enforcement to hold her down.

me: Seriously?  Rachel you’re fifteen!

Finally, the camouflage bandaid won her over and the shot was completed, but I was spent.  And now we had to get her eyes checked, and train her to poke contacts into her eyes.  I didn’t know if I had it in me.

Well, the eye doctor went better than I expected.  Her humor had returned.  She was psyched for the contacts.

But the bottom line…before I take Rachel to get another shot…somebody better slip me a Valium.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 12:05 am and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.