Adventures at the outpatient building
Today, three of us had doctor’s appointments. I won’t tell you WHO, but I will tell you that the reason we were there was to treat the most stubborn of all viruses – the wart virus (Iiiiiiiioouuuu! 
yuck!) . Picture this scene: We stop schooling early today to drive 25 minutes to the doctor’s office. We go to pick up Catherine early from Kindergarten, and I am HOPING in a serious way that her class got their pictures taken by the time I get there – it is picture day and she was VERY concerned before going to school that me picking her up early would cause her to not get her picture taken.
We arrive at the doctor’s office, and actually arrive 20 minutes EARLY!!! The first miracle of the trip! Then we spend the next 30 minutes trying very hard to not get kicked out of the waiting room, as I speak to the receptionist about a necessary referral paper, my son informs me that Catherine’s homework for school is to jump up and down and she has decided to do this RIGHT NOW IN THE WAITING ROOM! What’s that I hear? Our name gets called! Hooray, a distraction! Saved by the “bell” !
I gather everyone up – but not without incident – here’s what’s been going on while I have been busy giving the receptionist a hard time “chatting” about the whereabouts of the required HMO referral I need for today’s appointment that their computer system apparently “lost”. Luckily, she is kind, and makes a very special exception for me and gets me a temporary “override” and lets me go without the referral. After I find out she also had five kids, (“I had five kids too, and you know, I look back and don’t know how I did it.”) I feel guilty that I ever tried to “scold” her for losing my referral. Gianna is apparently tortured by a “string” in her sock that has snidely placed itself between her toe in an unfortunate position and is sending her through the roof – she took off her shoe, like 10 seconds before the nurse called our name, and now I have to somehow manage juggling a baby who wants to eat the pen I’m using to fill out paperwork in one arm and a “Shoeless Joe” in the other. Rats, bad timing. Kids My kids are really funny. They peel off layers of clothing when we go out somewhere and expect me to carry it all! Ha! At this “nurse calling us moment”, one of my dd has officially set the newest world’s record for leaving the longest “trail of breadcrumbs” all over the entire waiting room “with a backpack here and a coat over there, here a sweater, there a pencil, everywhere a homework paper…” .
Moving right along… I have always wondered WHY it is that the nurse calls the patient(s) to the waiting room, only to have them wait there for WHAT SEEMS TO BE A MILLION YEARS! for the doctor to enter the room. I swear I have waited up to an hour in this state of limbo in the past. Today, it’s a good 30 minutes. Imagine what five kids do in a 10′ X 10′ examining room to pass time? The first 5-10 minutes go smoothly….they are innocently sitting there telling jokes and everyone is smiling (including me). The passage of 10 minutes marks the entrance of boredom. The entrance of boredom signals a need for a change. Not a diaper change – although I should have done that also right about this time. Okay. Now after 15 minutes, it is HARD-CORE boredom. They have now decided to play musical chairs with the most coveted chair being the “doctor’s” pneumatic rolling swivel chair with the adjustable, spinning seat. My experience tells me this is not a good decision on my part to let ANYONE sit in it. I take it and hold it hostage with my feet. Phew! Next the passage of 20 minutes: Now they are using the paper they put on the examining table to make things more hygenic to play tic-tac-toe and hangman. Pretty benign for the most part. Catherine is wrapping herself up in the privacy curtain after 25 minutes – time for more distraction…. I suggest to John that he think of 101 uses for a surgical glove and the result is one of my favorites: “surgical glove balloons”! So we play “catch”, and the whole room is involved until they POP! Then we notice that the light switch has one of those sliding dimmer things that adjust the light level from low to high, and we play a game called “close your eyes and guess if I’ve turned the light on yet”, then Gianna turns all the lights off because, she says, it’s time to “tell ghost stories”, Catherine screams in fright and I am sure that everyone in China can hear her. At this point (30 minutes), the resident doctor and accomplice arrive at our room and open the door to see/hear the kids laughing in total darkness and ripped up pieces of paper on the floor with “Tic-Tac-Toe Cat’s Game” written on them. The only thing they say is “Whoa!”. Uh-oh. I feel like I am very young in years as I survey the room. However, I decide it really isn’t all that bad and all that we did was good clean fun.
“It must be hard to have all five of them?” the doctor says empathetically. “Actually,” I respond, “it’s quite fun!” She smiles as I tell her what we did to pass the time, and I voice my concern regarding the office policy that the doctor will only see two children from the same family on the same day. “That simply won’t work,” I assure her, “I mean it’s not a prudent idea in my case.” She hastily agrees with a smile, stating “I completely understand, I will do my best to get the doctor to see all three chidren with warts today instead of having you come back next week for the third one”. “Thanks so much”, I implore her, “for anything you can do.” There is much playful bantering between the kids and the doctor, resident and the assistant, and many compliments on how “cute” and “smart” the kids are since one of them decided to use the word “corroded” to describe what salicylic acid does to the epidermis of one’s skin. The visit is quite jovial, and at the end, everyone is taken care of and happy, and upon exiting the room, the doctor turns and says to me, “It was an absolute pleasure to meet you.” I smile and say thanks, and I can’t help but think that just by being who we are, the kids and I changed the perception in more than one person’s mind today about what life in a large family is really like.
