I May Be Going Down

Many, many dark moons ago when Hallie was younger and much smaller than she is now she was running, rather unsteadily, down a sidewalk to catch up to her daddy.  Crash, boom, bang.  She landed flat on her face and scraped it up pretty good.  After much screaming and many tears and a couple of ice cream cones (Mommy needed a treat to recover) she seemed to be fine, and the whole incident may have been completely forgotten by everyone except for the awful gash just by her left eye.  It was truly gross and horrific looking.

And not two weeks later she had a routine checkup with the friendly pediatric doctor.  He checked her joints, her eyes, ears, mouth, asked me all the important developmental questions and then in an unassuming manner asked me how she had gotten that injury on her eye.  I told him the story as quickly as I could, "Oh, she was running downhill and fell."  Because, you know, that was the truth.

Sometime later that nice doctor moved and the pediatric practice called and asked if we would switch to a different doctor. I had no reason to say no, so they switched us.  Sometime after that we went in for another routine appointment, and we all got to meet the new doctor for the first time.  He looked Hallie over, checking all the usual places, poking and prodding like any good doctor.  Then, looking me solemnly in the eye, he said, "Could you tell me how she got that scrape on her eye last year?" I'm not sure what I started doing first: twitching, sweating, rolling my hands, or whimpering.  Ok, I didn't do any of those things, but I really don't know which thought flashed through my mind first: How does he know about that? Why is he asking me? What is going on here? What does he think happened?

I mean, there was obviously a note about it in her records. And if there was a note, wouldn't the note tell the story? And if the note told the story, why did he need me to tell it to him again? The scar was no longer visible.  I did the only thing I could do, staring at him right back, I told the story again.  "She was running downhill, to catch her daddy.  She fell down and scraped up her face."

And as I left the office all I could think was "that was weird."  Since then, for many reasons, I have decided to switch doctors at that office again, and this new doctor comes highly recommended by a couple of my friends who take their children to the same practice.  Our appointment with this new doctor is next week.

Last week Hanna fell off of a chair face first and has two awful looking bruises, one on her cheek, and one on her forehead. I prayed and prayed that they would go away before this appointment, and encouraged Devin to pray for a miracle as well.  They began to fade almost the next day and I was so grateful.

Today at church Hanna tried to carry a large stool (it's a silly story) and she tripped and fell, and as she went down she hit her face on one of the legs of the stool.  She has an awful gash right by her now swollen, puffy left eye.  Oh, and those bruises from last week?  They have ceased fading and now, added to the new injury, just combine to make a really battered looking (yet still adorable) face.

I'm sort of terrified to meet this new doctor. What note is she going to write in my (ahem) Hanna's record that I will have to explain again in a year?  I fully support doctors being careful and keeping an eye out for their patients and asking about their injuries, but is it really necessary to follow up on what is clearly your everyday childhood accident A YEAR LATER?  Is that still on my (ahem) Hallie's record?  Should I flee the country?  No, that would just make me look guilty, television has taught me that much.

I'm thinking my best course of action is to come prepared with a file of character references.  So if you could take a minute to jot down some notes about how sweet, even tempered, calm, rational, and unlikely to harm my children I am, I may get out of this unscathed.  I'm sort of begging here.

But mostly I'm kidding. I hope, right? (nervous chuckle...)