The Doctor's Wife

I am a doctor's wife.  A pediatrician to be exact.  So if you tell me your child's symptoms on the playground, I've only got sympathy. No medical training at all.  And please don't assume when I tell you that my children are adopted that they are his kids from a first marriage and I'm the trophy wife.  Cause I'm the antisocial, antitrophy wife.

My husband and I were married when he went to medical school. And he came home every night smelling like his cadaver.  And talked about his cadaver, smelling like his cadaver, through dinner.  She was the other woman in our early marriage.  I thought the worst was over when he went on to residency, which was even worse.  I was completely positive we were through the worst, when the army sent him to war in Iraq for a year and a half.  Making me quite independent and capable of handling the kids and the household on my own.

Except now we're more settled.

And a bit more complacent.

So when my husband left for a weekend out of town and I was home with the kids, of course one of them gets sick.  And of course, my extensive non-triage training determines the first (and only) course of action is telling my husband.   Because as my kids will tell you sickness, math, science and anything and everything logical is the domain of my husband.  I'm more soft subjects like, language, politics, psychology, reading and reading into things.

Sore throat, slight fever, headache, I knew strep was a possibility and he'd need antibiotics if he did have it.  So, I texted my husband because obviously he's omniscient and can diagnosis from my extremely brief one line text. "Think Sky has strep."   Perhaps the next step is obvious, but it wasn't to me.  Take him to the clinic for a rapid test.  Oh, right.  Having your own doctor on call 24/7 is convenient.  Although maybe not for him.  Because a lot of times I don't even believe him.  Not because he's not a really good doctor.  Cause he is.  It's just that I'm also married to him.  Which changes everything.  

When I show up at the clinic with my oldest kid, who is officially 3 inches taller than me and looks ridiculous sitting in a pediatrician's office amidst the children's story books, on a Saturday.  And bonus, no one knows me because I'm very rarely at my husband's work.  Which means no small talk.  Except for the doctor, who oddly, I only know in a social capacity, not a professional one. Now, as I know from being a doctor's wife, a lot of doctoring, is "soft" work.  Huh...that's a weird rash, never seen one quite like it before.  Do I go fungal or bacterial here?  Though the strep test came back negative, upon examining his throat, the diagnosis was strep. So, we started him on antibiotics.

And it's ridiculous when you go to  your neighborhood Walgreens to buy antibiotics and they use their annoying corporate mandated "be well" as a salutation.  Cause I'm buying medicine.  So, obviously we're past being well.  Duhhhhhhhhh.

When my husband returned home and examined him, his diagnosis was the flu.   And now a second kid is sick.  So is it the flu?  Is it strep?   I have no clue.  Either way they're sick, they need rest and they're contagious.   And I want a hazmat suit and vats of bleach to decontaminate everything the sickos have touched.  Does it even matter what they have at this point?  Whatever it is, I don't want it.

 I DO know from a google search it's not measles or Ebola.

And that measles is unequivocally NOT capitalized and Ebola is.  

Cause I know things.

Completely useless things, but I know them.