Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Sick Kids

They are not really sick, just a bit under the weather and Entropy was complaining about an earache. I wouldn't be really concerned, except that my pediatrician retired earlier in the month.

He was wonderful -- a tad old fashioned and not dictated to by managed care. If you called in the morning, you could make an appointment for later in the afternoon -- sick appointments stared at 2:00 or so, just after lunch. I cannot ever remember sitting in the waiting room more than about 5 minutes before the nurse would say, "Y'all can come on back."

He's seen Chaos since she was about 18 hours old, and Entropy since she was about 30 hours old. He saw us through two tonsillectomies, orthopedic surgery on Chaos' foot and Entropy's bout of rheumatic fever.

He believed in preventive care and old fashioned remedies like salt water nasal lavage and cleaning scrapes with hydrogen peroxide. But he was also "up" on all the current trends in medicine, as well. He served as the president of the Georgia AMA a couple of years back.

He's the president of the Alumni association at my University and he will be speaking at my commencement. But he's not practicing medicine anymore (I personally think that he SHOULD retire so that he can enjoy his kids/grandkids etc.) but dern it -- I'm going to miss him.

I didn't realize how much I counted on him as one of those "anchor points" in my life. Just hit me today, when the kids are just a little "under the weather." Dern it.

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