Ella's Latest

"What's the difference between God and a doctor?"


"God knows He's not a doctor."


This is the joke that a friend told me after I relayed our experience with the neurologist this week. I knew it was bad from the second he walked into the examining room. He brushed past Seth without a glance. Made eye contact with me (then looked away without saying anything) and proceeded to station himself in front of Ella's file and read. For five minutes.

I've never experienced that before, ever. My parents taught me to greet someone upon meeting them for the first time. I am teaching my kids that--firm handshake, look at their face, and respond in a polite way, "Hi, how are you today?" We have even role played. Evidently, this doctor wasn't taught properly or lost all the practical lessons upon graduation of medical school. It's a shame. His momma is probably proud of his accomplishments but ashamed that his people skills are so lacking. He's probably a good doctor, but I couldn't like him. I really tried.

After asking a few questions about Ella's "episodes" he said, "Well, let's start her on this medication. It's relatively new. Has caused lethal rashes in some cases, but if we are careful with doses that won't be a problem. I'll write the script."

Whoa, wait a second! Might we discuss this, would you care to go into detail about the rashes? The LETHAL rashes? Are there other meds we could talk about? Oh, but you are typing on your little computer and ignoring us again. Hmmm. I interrupted his typing and started asking questions. I'm like that. Perturbing.

The doctor showed his irritation by answering my questions in you-are-an-idiot fashion.

Evidently I am an idiot, because I still had to come home and do some "research" on the internet. What did I find? My daughter is having absence seizures, and she has epilepsy. Will she grow out of this? No one knows. She's taking a little white pill that could cause a rash (but unlikely) that will be evidence of deeper, darker things going on in her body. Hopefully, the little white pill (which will evolve into 12 little white pills by March) will help her brain to stop shooting random electrical impulses during "math" class with Mommy. This diagnosis also gives us hope that Ella doesn't have ADHD, but instead is having so many seizures that she loses track of what she was saying/doing.

My mom mentioned what a blessing it is for us to still be waiting for our Ethiopian kiddos. We've been a little hectic lately and it's nice to get Ella "taken care of" before we go to Ethiopia. My mom is such an optimist, and in this case I will agree. It's nice to get things on the homefront settled before we launch ourselves into chaos.