Paranoia

I used to spend a good portion of well child checks inwardly rolling my eyes at the parents. I love kids. I think that well child visits are a great way to get the families in to the office to talk about prevention and screen for serious stuff that goes on behind closed doors.

What always killed me was the questions. Mom will have heard from her sister/mother/neighbor/appallingly inaccurate Internet source of an outbreak of listeriosis/autism/influenza/bubonic plague and they are now convinced that little Jimmy (OK, these days it's more likely to be little Jayvon) has contracted said disease. It doesn't matter that Jayvon has never been ill a day in his life/missed a developmental milestone/sneezed twice in a row/been a serf in medieval England. Nothing I can say at this point can trump Aunt Tilly/Mom/Ms. Jones/www.wrongdiagnosis.com (Sweet Jesus, save me from wrongdiagnosis.com!). Which brings up the intriguing, but ultimately irrelevant question of, "If I can't convince you otherwise, why are we even having this conversation?"

Then, the inevitable happened. I popped out one of my own. At various points in the past two years, I have been convinced that my child had measles, pyloric stenosis, Kawasaki disease, and a tail. Granted, that last one was before she was born.

None of this can beat the things that my husband, also a physician, can come up with when pressed. The same man who has repeatedly talked me out of emergent trips to the hospital readily acknowledges that he performs an extensive abdominal exam on our daughter every time he bathes her, just to make sure that no tumors have snuck in under the radar overnight.

When I was twenty weeks pregnant, we both managed to get out of work at the same time for our prenatal ultrasound- a feat that has yet to be repeated. Seriously, I delivered the baby on a weekend that he just happened to not be on call.

We debated beforehand whether or not to tell the technician that we were medical personnel. There are a number of studies that show that if you get treated as a VIP, you are more likely to received sub-standard care in the name of respecting your privacy or honoring your wishes. Our cover was probably already blown by the scrubs covered in mystery fluid that the father of my fetus was wearing. Any residual doubt was eliminated by his first words upon seeing his first-born:

"Oh, good. It has a brain."

Maybe my imagination is sub-standard, but nature has certainly invented fates that are infinitely more terrifying than anything I could have come up with on my own. Having studied embryology, pathophysiology and pediatrics gives those fears the power of realism and crystal clarity. What I underestimated was the extent to which I would worry about this soft, breakable creature with half of my genes.

So, part of me understands why parents are scouring the neighborhood, the Web and my office looking for The Answer, that horrible answer that makes all their kids' symptoms fit into the puzzle and delivers the crushing blow that they really are losing their soft, breakable little creature after all.

And part of me wants to shake those parents. I want to say, "Look. I'm stuck with this knowledge. My kid gets poked and prodded far more than necessary because of this knowledge. Relax. Let me worry for you. That's why I'm here." When I think that way, I start planning my charge on Congress to form a moratorium against all information on the Internet and a gag order for Aunt Tilly.