A Touchy Question...

"How many children do you have?" An innocent, yet fully loaded question for me.  My answer depends on who is asking.  Today it was a nurse at my new doctor's office.  I knew that what she was really asking was, "How many live births have you had?"  So I answered, "Four."  Anna's death had nothing to do with my reproductive health so I didn't really want to talk about it.  A visit to the gynecologist is bad enough without adding additional emotional stress.  But later in the interview, the nurse wanted to know the sex and birth years of my children.  That's when I lost it.  I started crying, "I don't have four living children.  One of them died."  Then I kept getting mixed up on all the years when everyone was born and died and the nurse was having trouble understanding so I had to repeat myself--while crying.  Whew!  I was glad when that part of the visit was over!  After I donned my designer gown I decided to calm myself down by reading the copy of my chart that was sitting there.  Boy was I surprised to see that I was allergic to sulfa drugs and that I had had a hysterectomy.  It was not my chart!  I had sent for my Oklahoma records back in January and they sent someone else's records with someone else's name on every page.  BIG MISTAKE.  I called them right away and STRONGLY (notice I did not say rudely) informed them of their error.  They got the fax number and sent the correct records immediately.  I left the other woman's records with the new doctor and I assume she will destroy them or send them back.
  The new doctor is very nice.  When she saw that I had lost a child she said, "Oh, I'm so sorry.  How are you doing with that?"  I told her that in spite of what her nurse might say, I am doing as well as could be expected.  Then she asked why it had been so long since I'd seen a doctor.  I said, "Well, I'm a grown up now and sometimes it's hard to make yourself do things that are good for you."  She laughed and said, "You mean people aren't counting the days until they get to see me?"  I said, "Oh I was counting the days, but not in a good way!"


Funny Story.... Will had a friend spend the night this week.  When I asked them what they wanted for breakfast, Will's friend said, "I don't care what we have, but I don't like strawberries and I don't like cheesecake."
Lucky for him, we hardly ever have strawberry cheesecake for breakfast!