Miracles of Modern Medicine

So far the good doctor has lived up to my guilt.

My husband and I took the rooster to the homiest office you ever saw today, complete with doilies and a living room and the whole shebang, and I admit that I do feel guilt that we got the appointment only because a friend called on our behalf. Who did the doctor not have room to take as a result? I can't go there. I do know that the rooster needs the good doctor, and so it was worth the guilt, just like the cake I ate with a shovel.

If you scroll through the D section of my cell phone's address bok, you might get carpal tunnel syndrome; we've aquired at least a dozen doctors in the last four years. So many have approached the rooster like the story of the blind men and the elephant until now. An eye issue, one declares. His ears! another cries. Yet another cannot get beyond his language struggles.

After seeing the rooster both on and off his game during our two-plus hour visit, the developmental pediatrician really saw the whole package. And it was the rooster she saw, with only a few hints of the dark twin. But even on good days like today, the rooster lacks reciprocity skills. He can't take turns, he can't cooperate, he won't be nudged. He gave that office a bit of a beating and made the doc earn her fee. This is more or less how she put it, "When the rooster sets the agenda, he can be charming! But when he doesn't, he can't function, and his behavior falls apart."

And, of course, there's all that tangential language -- if anything, his language was the car that refused to make noises at the shop the way it would at home. But no matter; the doc put all the pieces together and came up with the whole rooster, and she didn't deny that there is OT, PT, speech, and behavior intervention in our future. So why did I leave the doctor's office today feeling like I'd gotten good news? Really, we had gotten no news at all. We still don't have a diagnosis. We go back in a week for the results of the evaluation. But for the first time, we got more then head scratching and a list of what our boy can't do. I am encouraged because this doctor offers us more than just a diagnosis when we go back, she offers the medicine that our whole family so desperately needs: a plan for intervention.

So once again I find myself counting down the days until a doctor's appointment, and, if you still have any stomach for my greedy requests, once again I ask for your good thoughts.