We Don't Believe in Milk

My parents came over to baby-sit last night so that my wife and I could get our Christmas shopping done. We had been gone about an hour when we got a phone call from my dad informing us that 50% of our kids were puking. Awesome. My favorite time for people to vomit is when I'm not there. So, not only was I out having a great time with my wife, but my kids were getting the barfing out of the way while I was gone. I love this time of year.

When we got home the kids were in bed, so we watched The Bourne Ultimatum while my wife wrapped presents. A grand evening. About five minutes before the climax, a figure appeared out of the darkness of our peripheral vision. We turned and saw our oldest standing there, as white as rice, with a thick ivory paste covering his pajama top. He calmly said, "I need to be cleaned up." My wife immediately jumped into action, taking him into the laundry room, removing his shirt and scrubbing off the debris in the utility sink. He was standing next to her getting in a few more violent heaves.

I stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do with my hands. I was aware that there was another crime scene to be processed upstairs, but summoning the fortitude to volunteer for the job proved quite a hurdle. But after watching the two of them in the thick of it for a few moments, cold shame took over and I whispered, "Do you want me to take his sheets off the bed?" Unfortunately, she heard me and replied in the affirmative.

Here we go. I started up the stairs, careful to watch my step just in case he had left a trail. As I turned the corner into the boys' room, the odor hit me like a 200-pound cadaver. I don’t know if I can do this. Pressing on, I began to gingerly remove the sheets from the top bunk, taking great pains to not see or touch anything foreign, and making a conscious effort to breathe through my mouth. In order to pull the sheets off the back corner, I had to stand on the bottom bunk, at which point I let down my guard and caught sight of the vast landscape of half-digested macaroni and cheese.

Ooh-ho-ho mmmmommy dearest. When I came to, my wife was carrying the soiled bedding out the door and into the kitchen. She scrubbed that vile, biohazardous material off every square inch of every last blanket, sheet, and pillow case. No latex gloves, no haz-mat suit, and no Vicks VapoRub smeared on her upper lip to combat the smell. She simply washed her hands and said, "Let's go finish the movie." If this woman isn't the RoboCop of motherhood then I don't know anything.

So, we're probably going to have to take the kids to the doctor. That is, we get to go pay someone to treat us like imbeciles. Don't get me wrong - I like doctors. But our pediatric group for some reason always sticks us with a nurse practitioner. I feel like asking, "What? My co-pay's not good enough for a real doctor?" What a racket – get someone with half your education to do all of your job for a third of the salary while you burn down stogies out on the golf course. I don't remember the last time we saw a bona fide pediatrician. A couple of months ago, I took our oldest in and they didn't even give us our standard nurse practitioner - they sent in a trainee. I had to coach this poor person through the exam.

“Umm, I don’t think his sore throat is down there.”
“Yeah, he’s about to black out – you might not want to bear down so hard.”
“No, no, no - orally.”

It's getting to the point that I truly expect to one day see my kids being treated by someone with all the medical training of a pipefitter.

“Yes, I’m sorry, but we’re all out of medical professionals today. Instead, you’re pride and joy will be seeing Vern from JiffyLube in room 4. Oh, wait-- That’s right – I forgot, he had to go home early today – he injured himself with a tongue depressor. That leaves... Zokta, the witchdoctor... or Pepe, the recovering internet predator. Pepe could fit you in around noon. Shall I put you down?”

The educational downgrading of the personnel examining the kids makes the treatment we get even harder to take. At our son’s checkup after his second birthday, we had our first encounter with the nurse practitioner. Apparently, she had just gotten out of the nurse practitioner academy because she was spraying musk like a skunk in a lion’s den, peppering us with questions about his care, and reacting with varying intensities of disapproval with each answer.

My wife’s patience began to wane as the nurse started to ask our son questions. “Jackson? Jackson? Can you look at me?”

He just continued playing with the instruments on the wall, at which point she slowly turned around with eyes bulging, stared incredulously at my wife for several seconds, then asked with spitting contempt, “Does . . . he . . . understand . . . what . . . I’m . . . saying . . . to . . . him?”

“He understands – he just doesn’t like you.”

She asked a few more questions, tapped a few more body parts, and just generally acted as if we weren’t fit to care for a gold fish and our son had the motor skills and cognition of a brain-dead ape.

His checkup the following year was sweet vindication. He had blossomed and was quite intelligent. At that point, the n.p. had nothing to criticize about him, so she turned her disdain solely upon us.

Now each visit to the “doctor” ends up being a quest to quickly and cleanly bat away any condescending questions so that we can just get the medicine we need. We start out the appointment feeling quite cooperative, but by the end we’re Fort Knox – you ain’t getting anything out of us.

“Has he had a flu shot yet this year?”

“No, ma’am.”

“May I ask why?”

“I guess.”

“Okay, why?”

“The worst flu I ever got was right after getting a flu shot.”

“Well, you know a three-year-old’s body can’t handle the flu like yours can. But if you want to play Russian roulette with your son’s eternity, I can’t stop you.”

“Last winter none of us took anything but Flintstone vitamins and for the first time in our history there wasn’t so much as a sniffle in our house from November to May. Prior to that, if one or all of us got a flu shot, our home became a temporary satellite for the CDC. Now, those results may not pass peer review, but they’re good enough for morons like us.”

“Fine. Has he been drinking at least 16 ounces of milk per day?”

“We don’t believe in milk.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s a religious thing – we don’t like to talk about it. Any more questions?”

“Will he be getting his next round of vaccinations?”

“No.”

“May I ask why?”

“As I mentioned a moment ago, we’re morons. And we hate our children.”

There should be a small bit of grace granted to a parent who has successfully kept a child - or four – breathing until his third birthday. Somehow, in spite of our never having gone to nurse practitioner school, we’ve managed to keep the kids alive. We just put food in one end, get rid of what comes out the other, and give copious hugs.

I accept the fact that in this life we all have our burdens to bear. It just seems to me that the worst thing about my kids being sick should be the puke, not the doctor’s office.