>Mother Knows Best
>When illness strikes the Ferrier house, my mother is always the last to find out.
In fact, she often learns that one of us is suffering from pus-filled bumps and a fever of 106 by reading this very blog.
And she doesn’t like that very much.
“I’m your mother,” she lamented over the phone in the midst of our pneumonia debacle a few months back. “I shouldn’t be finding these things out at the same time as the rest of the world.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her (face to face, anyway) that I have one good reason for keeping her in the dark. Like all moms, she worries too much. And so a phone call that begins with me telling her that the baby has pink eye is likely to end with her dire warning that we all need to head to our nearest emergency room, because it sounds like a case of the bubonic plague. And she knows this because she saw it on Oprah. And also? She got an e-mail forward about it.
Case in point: Last weekend.
My parents came to visit on the same day that I came down with a horrible chest cold. It had followed on the heels of three straight weeks of strep throat, so to say I was worn down was a major understatement.
“I’m worried about you,” Mom said as I coughed and hacked through one of our conversations.
“Yeah,” I wheezed. “Catching a cold after strep is the pits.”
“I’m worried it’s something more serious,” she said quietly, touching my arm. Tears formed in her eyes. “Far more serious,” she added in a broken voice.
An uncomfortable silence followed. I half-expected strains of the theme song from Terms of Endearment to begin playing in the background.
After a brief moment of panic as I realized I hadn’t even bothered yet to choose music for my funeral, I remembered that I had caught this supposedly fatal chest cold from my kids. They seemed to be recovering just fine.
At least, I thought so. Mom wasn’t so sure.
“There he goes again,” she said, gazing mournfully at Bruiser as he played in the den.
“What?” I asked.
“He just tugged on his ear,” she said. “That’s the second time he’s done that since I’ve been here.”
“Yeah, he does pull on his ears sometimes,” I said.
“Lindsay,” my mom said wearily, shaking her head. “That’s the sign of an ear infection, you know.”
I took a close look at Bruiser. He was happily playing with his toys. Bruiser was a screamer, and if he was even remotely uncomfortable, he let us know in no uncertain terms.
“I don’t think so, Mom,” I said, brightly. “He seems fine.”
“You need to keep an eye on that,” she warned.
For the rest of the weekend, if Bruiser’s hand came within an inch of his ear, my mom was all over it. “There he goes again,” she’d say, staring at me as though I were a fireman idly standing by while a house burned to the ground just a few feet away from me.
Outwardly, I kept my cool, but the truth was that by the time Mom and Dad went back home, I was a basketcase. What if Bruiser’s eardrum exploded because of my negligence? What if he went deaf? I mean, he could learn sign language and get by fine, but the real problem was that I’d never hear the end of it from my mom!
After a night spent tossing and turning to a nightmarish vision of my mom saying, “I TOLD you so. I TOLD you so,” in monotone, I frantically dialed our pediatrician’s office and made an appointment for Bruiser to see a doctor.
“Your Dr. Perky is on maternity leave,” the receptionist told me. “But Dr. Fuzz has an opening at 2:30.”
I winced. “Okay,” I said slowly. An appointment with the ancient Dr. Fuzz was in some ways worse than staying home and waiting for Bruiser’s eardrum to explode. In fact, our appointment with Dr. Fuzz is a story in itself.
A story that will have to wait until tomorrow.
>Egads. The dreaded substitute pediatrician! I can’t wait for this story…
>wow, only you could make household illness a hilarious drama!! hope you get to feeling better, and enjoy that copay. at least with the current medical situation you don’t have to stand in line for a week to get an ear looked at. if we get socialized medicine, your kid could go deaf and you mom would have a heart attack worrying about it!
>Wow. If misery has to love company, then I’m glad to read your post.It’s not that I belived I was the only one to have a mother like that, but your story could have most assuredly been one told from our house.At least you have the nerve to post about your mom on your blog. Talk about me never hearing the end of it…Thanks. 🙂
>Your mom is so funny! I’m sure she doesn’t mean to be, but she is. Great script… I could almost hear it happening.
>I don’t think it would be just a week, purejoy.
>I have a feeling all grandmothers are this way and I’ll be this way too with my own kids. 🙂 My mom’s awesome and she has a knack for um, speaking the truth, even when I don’t want to hear it. It started when I was a teenager (“That boy’s not worth your time!”) and continues to this day. 😀 And now I’m telling my own stepdaughters things they don’t want to hear sometimes, and I’m getting the exact same looks of horror and skepticism that I gave my own mom!
>My mother-in-law freaks out after the fact: “OH I KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG!!!” Why didn’t you tell me? “I didn’t want to worry you” She’s helpful that way. Then again, if she worried out loud – I would have to strangle her with my bare hands!
>Yeah, um, it’s worse if she’s a nurse!! I loved having a nurse mom in the delivery room, and to have one for a handy reference book, but sometimes, it’s a bit much! “Katie, Reed is wheezing so badly. You know that people die from pneumonia?” I didn’t sleep a wink that night. Mothers! I’m sure we’ll NEVER be that way! 🙂
>My mother would have no right to complain. When she had her total hip done last year, I got a phone call from my dad, “Just wanted to let you know that your mom’s out of surgery and she’s okay.”Umm…what surgery?
>hate the substitute ped.. your not alone in the mom catagory either. my husband had heartburn…she was worried it was a heart attack..i should say we lost my dad to a heart attack almost a year ago..so she has a right to be concerned…I also have to remind her that the kids are fine and we dont live in plastic bubbles
>We must be sisters cause that sounds just like MY mother….love her dearly….I really do. 🙂
>Oh my gosh, you could be writing about my mother. My only problem is that I always tell her when one of us is sick. I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut. I’m convinced she jumps to the worst case scenario just on the outside chance that it turns out to be true, than she can say “that’s what I thought it was…”. Maybe if she has to start paying the doctor bills she’ll quit suggesting my kids go to the doctor every time they sneeze. Love her for caring though!!
>Grrrrr. You just described a watered down version of my MIL, whom I love dearly, but also needs to learn to SHUT HER MOUTH AND LEAVE MY KIDS TO ME. Ahem. I mean needs to recognize that I am not in fact a crackwhore too stupid to take my child to the doc when there is something actually wrong with her. Ear pull does not equal ear infection. Red eye does not equal pink eye. Whining does not equal dying but quite often does mean “Leave me alone Nana you’re really pissing me off.” Also, I’m a nurse. She’s an accounting professor. I’m thinking I might know a little more about my own sick kid than she does. Oops, I didn’t say that.
>Sweet Lord! We must have the same mom. Lael just fininshed getting over Pink Eye in both eyes and my mom says…”Why does she keep getting pink eye?” You know in one of those your house is dirty and you can’t take care of your child right tones. Hmmpp!
>Dr. Fuzz, huh?I have a Dr. Fuzz too. It’s this cranky male pediatrician who once told me that he just wanted “to keep the community safe” when I explained that I was delaying giving Natalie her MMR shot. Natalie is also a screamer and has been known to scream the house down if she so much as bumps her hand against the couch.
>Lol, the only comfort I can offer is that at least she worries, right?That’s what I tell myself about some relatives…
>Can a kid actually go deaf from a ruptured eardrum? Not a mom, so I have no point of reference. My sister-in-law was almost deaf as a child until they figured out she needed tubes in her ears. I guess that’s about the opposite of ruptured eardrum.However, my grandfather told me he ruptured his eardrum when he was in his 20s/30s, and his only problem was making sure he didn’t scuba dive, as he couldn’t equalize pressure and it was painful.
>Can’t wait for tomorrow’s story. My husband fell last year while fishing and a stick went into his ear and ruptured his ear drum… don’t ask!! 🙂
>Kids and doctor visits. I don’t remember most of mine. The few I do..ugh.I will say this (applied strictly to me, since results vary family to family): frequently, mothers DO know best. On illness, anyway 😉
>My mom is like that, too. Always searching my face or skin for signs of illness. “You’re looking a little sallow,” she’ll say, when we meet for lunch. “Are you taking your vitamins?”But when I was little kid? Different story altogether. Anytime I coughed or had a fever, she’d get mad. “Stop that coughing! It’s completely unncessary,” she’d say. “Get over that fever NOW. There’s nothing wrong with you.”As a mom, I find myself doing the same damn thing with my kid. “Stop that sniffling at once,” I’ve commanded, on more than one occasion. I HATE it when my kid gets sick. Is it guilt maybe, from the Cheetohs??
>If it helps any with the worrying, my kid did actually rupture an eardrum once because the infection got so bad so fast, and he hears just fine now when he feels like it. He’s 15. Need I say more?
>My mother is awesome….my MIL on the other hand….totally goes into a tizzy ever time that the kid sneezes. I guess I know where my husband gets it from now. Can’t wait to hear the end of the story!Thanks for the nice comments about EC. I think he is pretty cute too!
>Try having a hospital medical transcriptionist for a mother. Everything is DOOMSDAY.
>I totally understand your pain. I love, er…loathe, when my mom offers medical advice for my children.I mean, does she think I’d seriously neglect their medical needs?*Sigh* I should be writing all this down for when I’m a grandmother…but, I’m not.
>I’m relieved that I’m behind on my blog reading so that I got parts one and two all in one sitting! One of the rare occasions when not being on top of my gae actually pays off 😉