I thought it was only appropriate to snap a picture today of a WIP at Urgent Care since almost all of my knits get to visit the doctor's or dentist's office at some point during their time on the needles. This trip was sponsored by a suspected rib injury in teen #2. Ahhh... the ongoing saga of boys, their bikes, and the things they think they can jump. Supposedly the rib is okay, but (if you've been around here enough, you'll know) I rarely believe doctors.... especially when it comes to x-rays. I've refused to get fillings in cavities that I could not see on the x-ray and I've carried x-rays of supposedly healthy bones around to other docs (well, at least to our chiropractor) because I'm sure I see something the doctor has missed. Yes, I realize that doctors have received special training in reading x-rays and it's not a skill easily mastered by a curious mom. I'm just telling it like it is. However, while I was there, still feeling pretty cruddy myself, I recognized a perfect opportunity to get an accurate temperature reading. (You may not understand my obsession with temperature, but don't feel bad, few people would. But somehow an actual fever validates any symptoms I may be feeling and formally excuses me from household duties. It's like a note from the doctor... without it I don't feel excused.) Much to my son's chagrin, I was quick to slip one of their little band-aid sized thermometers in my mouth when the nurse exited. Much to my chagrin, the usual half-hour wait for the doctor was cut short by about 28 minutes.
Oh well, it didn't seem to work either. And I didn't get a second chance because apparently once it's been elevated to a certain temperature (like by left in a hot car), it does not return to normal and shaking doesn't help. (Boy I miss mercury.) My friend, Julie, suggested that I get those little digital ones but I was quick to inform her that these didn't work either. It was in this moment... this brief, but alarming moment... while Julie was carefully phrasing her response, that it painfully pierced my conscience that the problem just may lay more with the obsessive temperature taker than the thermometers themselves.
Ugh! I hate these moments.
6 comments:
Maybe you do have a compulsion there. But, I'm in agreeance. The new fangled thermometers don't work. When the ear thermometer beeps like it's found something, then I take a rectal temp from my kids. (Of course, that's because they're too little to hold anything under their tongue.) And while the ear thing beeped at 101 they may actually be 104! And when I call the Dr. because they have a fever...he trusts the rectal reading more too. They do make old-school thermometers...the kind you hold under your tongue for several minutes, it's just not murcury in the vile any more...but they're still better than any digital/ear/forehead/whatever thermometer.
I was at the peds today myself with a suspected strep, which turned out to be just swollen toncils so instead of antibiotics they suggested Motrin and popsicles. Great. Nothing better than a whining preteen. Oh and they had a neat thermometer there that they ran across my sons forehead, past the temple down to his earlope. No sticking it into the ear, holding it in the mouth or anything. Kinda neat. I want one like that.
Dear km - I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for offering your agreeable sentiments and validation of my thermometer neurosis.
Bring back mercury!!
Seriously, a little mercury poisoning and we all have to give up the most accurate temperate readings?? I hate the ear thermometers and I don't trust the other kinds either. I think it's funny that my daughter, with absolute no influence from me, is an obsessive temperature taker. During winter last year, she ran down the batteries on one of my thermometers.
BTW, I can remember when my mom would break a thermometer, she would let us play with the mercury for a while. I tell her that's why I failed Algebra.
I came over to your blog from The Quiet Life, too. Anyone who is watching the first season of House and secretly appropriating thermometers for their own obsessive purposes is on my Bloglines list!
Hope teen #2 is ok. I often think kids and their ailments affect parents more than the kids themselves. You all will be in my prayers! Is this what I have to look forward to with my little man?
Yeah, like I'm the normal one??!! I wish!
P.S. I love the sidebar animation...it amuses me enourmously!
Post a Comment