Dad Diary

 It's a standard refrain--how inadequate so many doctors are, how chaotic their offices can be. I've read the explanations about being overtaxed. I empathize. As a tutor, I sometimes do not want to show up. My bedside manner can be "terse." I can be slightly--or significantly--distracted.

My child's neurologist is well-intentioned, but she tends to be forty minutes late. Each time this happens, she appears stunned--as if she herself cannot believe she is so tardy. But I've stopped "buying" the act, since the lateness is now a ritual. It's like if you let your dog shit on your neighbor's garden sculpture every single morning. Eventually, your neighbor is going to suspect that your "surprised face" is just a kind of pantomime.

The neurologist had a nurse call to say that my child's potassium level was high. What followed was a kind of nonsense word salad. "Maybe it's high because he didn't fast before the blood work." (No one told us to have him fast, and in fact his papers specifically said, "Do not fast.") "Maybe it's high because of hemolysis, where the nurse essentially screws up....They screw up all the time with little kids....But go (immediately) and do it again....Then (immediately) get an EKG....Have a great afternoon!"

The upshot is that the neurologist was wrong--and one brief call to the pediatrician would have kept her from jumping the gun. That call would have made life easier--certainly, for my son, and for a few other people in his family.

I'm reading "Bury Me Already," by Julia Wertz; it's a candid acknowledgement of how boring, confusing, and stressful early parenthood can be. She writes without self-pity--she makes the work look easy. This is a cliche, but I have to say the following: I don't know how she does it.