The Day With The Alien Eye
Added at 10:51pm and filed under Oh Mama, Random Rant, health
My son has beautiful eyes.
I know that all mothers think this way about our kids. We always think that our offspring have the cutest grin, the softest hair, the bubbliest laugh but . . . really. Just look at him: they’re stunning. They’re a gorgeous hazel/green that I’ve yet to see anyface else, offensively emotive, unabashed and curious, framed with long, dark spiky lashes. I fall in love each and every time I look into them, and the most wonderful part is that, as neither M nor I have brown eyes (you can imagine the rumours) they don’t remind me of anyone other than him – they’re utterly and unequivocally his.
For as long as I can remember though, he’s had intermittent problems with his eyes. I sometimes think that if they weren’t so huge and didn’t take over half his face, he wouldn’t be so prone to infections and irritations. For his Year One school photo – when he was, what, just three? – there’s a definite swelling of his right eye – nothing hideous, but enough for a mummy to notice – and twelve months later, it’s the same story for his Year Two one, too. We go through Brolene eye drops like . . . well, something hard to exhaust, and I think a week rarely goes by without me needing to rugby tackle him to the ground to administer them.
But recently? Recently S has A Very Sore Eye.
When I see the words written like that, I see them for what they are – pale, silly and a little ineffectual. It doesn’t sound like much because it, really, having a sore eye isn’t much, is it? An eye infection is like a grazed knee or a bruised shin and pretty inconsequential in childhood. And yet it’s so much more than that.
He’s been suffering with this current irritation for about seven weeks. I’m pretty certain of that time frame because his speech therapist mentioned it – twice – halfway through his SALT block, and we finished seeing her almost three weeks ago. It’s been intermittent, worse some days than others, but bad enough for me to take him back to the doctors . . . you know, just in case.
An aside: I walked through the door and had to bite back a groan – I fucking hated this doctor. Even as I sat there, feeling as though I had to defend my decision to bring him in, I was reminded of the last time I saw her and she inferred that I was over-reacting when I lost my first child. When They failed to properly remove my baby and three months later I went into labour and fucking expelled something from my uterus, she sat across the desk from me and coldly informed me that it was ‘just’ ‘foetus matter’. Oh yeah. She’s all about the caring and the bedside manner, this one.
The visit went much as I’d anticipated. She wasn’t interested in S nor his eye, and when I voiced my concern that the lid ever-so-slightly droops she laughed – not nicely – and asked what did I expect, we weren’t supermodels, no-one’s face was perfectly symmetrical. I just stared back: Yes, that’s it. I’ve brought my son to see you today because his face is not symmetrical. It has nothing to do with the fact that it’s permanently infected, that on some days he can’t even open it its so swollen. She prescribes stupid, pointless fucking antihistamine drops which, clearly, do fuck all because he doesn’t have an allergy IN JUST ONE FUCKING EYE. And then we sit there for a bit, staring at each other – you know, like dueling dogs – until she kind of yawns and asks what else did I want, a referral? There’s no point – it’s nothing to worry about. I politely dissent and in the end she took her head out of her arse just long enough to refer him onto an Opthalmology specialist. She made it very clear that it was under duress, though; I bet the words ‘over-anxious mother’ appear on the fucking referral letter.
Anyway. Fast forward to this Wednesday. It’s swollen and red again and bad enough for me to keep him back from school. He’s perfectly fine in himself – all chatty and cute – my one saving grace through all of this – but I do it all the same because there’s no way that this isn’t causing him pain. Kids have remarkable pain thresholds and I’ve been panicking that S’s eye is so sore so often that it’s simply his reality now. It’s a repeat story Thursday and Friday, so M stays home and we develop a strict bathing/cleansing/treatment regime in an attempt to clear it up over the weekend. Yesterday it wasn’t too bad – and so he gets to go to the birthday party he really, desperately wanted to attend – but then today S wakes up and his eye is hideous: really, truly hideous. He can open it, but you almost wish he couldn’t; it’s completely blood-red, from one side to the other, and swollen to twice its usual size. He jumps onto the bed to kiss me good morning and it’s so bad I actually recoil. Four days of four-times-a-day,-baby Brolene has done nothing, and I decide that I simply can’t wait this out any longer; the drops the doctor gave are fucking useless, the Brolene isn’t working and his hospital appointment isn’t until mid-May. I call the out-of-hours service to get him seen today.
And it’s like there’s a national shortage of doctors who give a shit. The guy I speak to on the phone – and ultimately end up seeing later that day – asks, if S’s eye is ‘that bad’, why didn’t I take him to the doctors on Wednesday when I kept him off school? Um, how about because of your fucking colleague made me feel like a over-zealous freak and treated it as a fucking allergy? And when we finally get into the surgery 5pm, he takes one look at S, declares his face ‘a mess’ (I wish to God I was making this up) and then asks if I ‘bother’ cleaning it. WTF? I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. I was told it was a motherfucking allergy. I had been lightly wiping it with tepid water and a corner of a fresh towel to try and keep it gunge free, but when I said as much he honest-to-Christ scowled at me in a WTF kind of way that I’d expect if I had said that I scrubbed his face with bleach and wirewool. I repeat: WTF?
S’s diagnosed with an antibacterial infection. The doctor grabs some antibac ointment for us and – how condescending – some fucking cotton wool, tells me to bathe it thoroughly and regularly with cool boiled water between putting in the goo four times a day. He makes me feel like the scabbiest, stupidest, most pathetic parent on the face of the planet and because I’m tired and frightened and confused, I simply let him. Maybe at this point, I believe him. I’m not by nature a placid person, not someone who historically lets people make her feel that way but . . . not today. Today I’m every bit a fucking doormat. I even say thank you as I leave the room, as though the humiliation was a wonderfully unanticipated extra: pay for one belittling comment, get the second free.
Throughout it all, S’s just my star. He leaps around the waiting room playing Ben 10, chattering on about the difference between the aliens, telling me that I shouldn’t be sad about his eye, that it’s all okay, that it’s only because he’s been injected with alien DNA and it’s making him strong. And though he hates every second of it, he’ll voluntarily lie down for us to administer the drops/ointment because he trusts me when I tell him that I have to do it.
Jesus: I’ve been writing this for hours. I’m sorry this is all over the fucking place. I’m too beat to try and edit tonight, but I’ll try and tidy it up tomorrow.
Anyway, as I type S’s tucked in bed where, hopefully, beneath sleeping lids the antibacterial ointment is doing its stuff and by this time tomorrow, looking at his beautiful face won’t make me want to cry.
Comments: (12)
12 Comments
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Comments Are Closed
To prevent comment and trackback spam, all entries here automatically close the comment form after seven days.
If you are interested in adding a comment to a closed entry, no problem - simply contact me with your comment and I will add it for you!
On 5 May, 2008 at 9:36 am, sharon said:
Fucking emergency doctors piss me off; they really don’t give a toss, which in turn makes my job ten times worse. What is it about GPs that makes you feel that they’re doing you a favour by seeing you? Grrrr.
Hope S is better today. Give him a hug from me :)
On 5 May, 2008 at 1:43 pm, Vixx said:
I guess it’s something of a comfort to know that emergency doctors are cunts to everyone and not just the people they’re treating.
The hug has been passed on. :)
V xx
On 5 May, 2008 at 2:50 pm, Amelie said:
Emergency doctors suck. I went to one who Googled my symptoms to find out what was wrong with me.
On 5 May, 2008 at 2:57 pm, Vixx said:
Wow. That’s . . . well, terrifying, quite frankly.
V xx
On 5 May, 2008 at 6:13 pm, Claire said:
Wow. Nice. You have my sympathies, I’ve dealt with some shitty med professionals over the years, though thankfully I now currently fortunate enough to have a really good GP. IMHO, having a really supportive GP is half the battle when it comes to on-going diagnosis/treatment/referrals.
Are you not able to change to a neighbouring practice?
Hope my favourite little Spidersam gets better soon. x (Whenever I see anything remotely Spiderman related now, I always think of your little lad)
On 5 May, 2008 at 6:15 pm, Claire said:
P.S. that should be *am currently*, not “now currently”… I can’t proof-read for piss…*sigh*
On 5 May, 2008 at 6:35 pm, Vixx said:
Me neither. Don’t sweat it. :)
I know. It’s all so frustrating. But the good news is, as gross as he still looks, he’s looking much, MUCH better this evening. Yay!
V xx
On 5 May, 2008 at 8:49 pm, Teesee said:
Fuck the doctors. What do they know? Ok they studied medical type stuff for the last ten years or whatever, but that’s about it :p
Besides, if you still think you are being a bad mother, I suggest you get this book: http://tinyurl.com/4crvlh
I neither have read this book or have children, but apparently 3 million parents have read this book… and then probably proceeded to throw it straight in the bin. Who said books can’t teach you anything eh? Don’t say I never help you out with anything after this little jem.
On 5 May, 2008 at 8:50 pm, Teesee said:
Ha I just spotted this on that link:
8 used & new available from £2.71
I wonder if the used copies have handy margin notes in from the previous readers?
On 6 May, 2008 at 10:08 am, sharon said:
The author’s name is Dinkmeyer. For some reason that makes me giggle.
On 7 May, 2008 at 3:24 pm, valerie said:
O.M.G.
That doctor is a bitch. No way around it. And the other one is a complete ass.
Are you able to pick another doctor besides bitchy woman? (I’m not sure how healthcare is in the UK.) Here I can switch but so far I haven’t. I have switched from about three I hated and I actually like this guy now even if he does think that antibiotics are the cure for everything (he’d probably give them to me if I went in for a broken bone). But he’s still the best one I’ve found so far.
Ugh I am just glad S is doing better now. Eye swellings are scary. My niece had something similar last year, just absolutely swollen like crazy. So yes, glad to hear S is doing better!! Hopefully it will stay better this time.
On 8 May, 2008 at 3:54 pm, Jem said:
How did you not punch them? Both of them? Jesus christ..