ill communications

No haircut on Saturday. No birthday parties on Saturday. Samson slept fitfully (a nice way of saying not at all) and had a fever that just wouldn't go down. We ended up calling our pediatrician, who I genuinely like, but who is almost as laid back as this guy.

I don't doubt his competence, but he's so intent on telling you "it's perfectly normal" [NB: we've probably called him six times in a whole year, so I can't claim anything like a statistically valid sample size] that when he says something is serious, you get a little freaked out.

So we took Samson to the after hours pediatric care at St. Joseph's hospital. We figured he had an ear infection, hence the no sleep and persistent fever. Smooth sailing until the nurse tried to put the admitting i.d. bracelet on his ankle. He screamed for the next two hours any time anyone besides Vicki or I came near him.

I realized that although I've probably used the term hundreds of times, I've never truly appreciated what "screaming bloody murder" means. I do now. He screamed so loud and so continuously that neither the nurse nor the doctor could hear his chest with the stethoscope. Which meant that the doctor, fearing --- or at least wanting to rule out --- pneumonia ordered a chest X-ray. I'm not sure it's possible to overstate how vulnerable Samson looked, sitting on a table with nothing but a diaper and little lead loincloth around him. I had to hold him still, which was good because I don't think I could have borne being across the room from him while all this was going on.

The results were negative, and his fever is now gone. He's still a little out of sorts, but we managed to get out of the house a bit today and get some sunshine. Knock wood, tonight will be the first in three that I'm not chaperoning some member of the family while they get obstreperous in a doctor's office. [To Samson's credit, nobody got bitten.]