Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Well Child

The track season is coming. We had to get Alyssa’s sports physical recently. My doctor is pretty great about billing this visit as a well-child visit, so insurance pays the whole thing as preventative. I’ll take it.

Alyssa always passes with flying colors, because yeah, she’s a healthy kid. I’m very lucky. I know this.

Alyssa, on the other hand, doesn’t have a lot of luck when it comes to doctor visits.

This is the second time we’ve shown up at an appointment and been informed that she needs a shot.

The first time was when she was twelve and she was receiving her first HPV vaccination. The nurse came in and informed us that she was due for four other vaccinations at that time.

She looked at me with huge eyes. I kind of blinked at her and shrugged. I mean, if they were due and she needed them, let’s just do it.

I did take a minute to ask the nurse if it was safe for her to get five vaccinations in one day.

The nurse assured me it was fine.

And what do you know, four years later, no signs of autism in Lyss. Huh.

Wait…maybe the vaccinations are the cause of the gay…OMG! You guys! That’s it! Vaccinations cause previously straight kids to swing to either bi or gay. You heard it here first!!!

Oh right. That’s stupid. Sorry, I got caught up in my own excitement that I was going to be the next Jenny freaking McCarthy, who, by the way is a major hag. Just saying.

So yesterday we arrive for a sports physical that is being called a well-child visit.

Alyssa has been weighed and measured. Her eyes have been checked, left eye sees at 20/15 and right eye sees at 20/25, together, they see 20/20.

The nurse herds us into exam room #5. She looks over Lyss’s chart and…here it comes…

“She’s due for a meningococcal booster.”

Okay, I admit it. I laughed.

Alyssa glared at me.

I laughed some more.

The nurse looked concerned, like maybe I’d lost my mind. Which, see the previous post regarding fifth grade homework, OF COURSE I’VE LOST MY MIND!

Ahem.

She got the shot. And she was fine. She is fine. She is a tough old bird (at the ripe old age of 16) and takes this kind of thing like a champ.

As you can tell, I’m very pro-vaccines. I think people who don’t vaccinate their perfectly healthy children are morons. They’re a menace to society.

Babies should not be dying from the fucking measles and yet…they are because people are stupid and not vaccinating their kids against whooping cough and the measles and so the smallest, weakest among us are suffering.

It pisses me off because it’s so very preventable.

And I’ll step off my soapbox for now.

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