Trapped at the Doctor's: Endless Waiting, With Two Four-Year-Olds and a String of Work Emergencies

11/19/2009

The tired-looking woman at the doctor’s office shoves a towering stack of paperwork at me. After relentless haranguing by the boys' school, we’re here at the D.C. branch of a national HMO to get their age-four shots.
 

And it doesn’t bode well that we’re greeted with at least half a trunk’s worth of dead tree. (Can’t they just Xerox what I filled out last time? It’s exactly the same.)

When I’m finally done furiously writing what I’m sure nobody will ever read—I’m reminded of those college blue-book tests—I plunk it down on the front desk.

A nurse looks up, calls out, “You know, there are four people in front of you. Gonna be a while.”

“WHAT? Why so many in front of me? How did this happen?” As it is, it’s a bad day to be missing work. We’re in the middle of 18 health care-reform-related emergencies, I’ve taken on a huge new project, and then there are the usual Web fires.

“Dunno. Just the schedule today.” The nurse just looks at me, impassive. All she’s missing is the bubble gum to snap. “You wanna reschedule?”

“No!  I had to upend my schedule for this as it is! I just hope it goes fast!” I stride back to my seat, fuming.

For the next two hours—yes, two hours!—we wait. While I frantically try to schedule meetings on my BlackBerry—thinking, there has to be a better way than finger-punching these microscopic keys—the kids throw stuff around the waiting room and periodically dive-bomb me.

When we're finally shown to an examining room, a nurse takes some readings, scribbles on a chart, and leaves. And then….you guessed it, we wait some more. At least another half hour more.

It’s past the boys’ lunch time, well into their nap time, and they’re getting VERY CRANKY. And now I'm supposed to undress them and get them into those freezing-cold paper things. They don't comply.

Bzzzzzzzt! Bzzzzzzzt! My BlackBerry starts going bananas:  “EMERGENCY: Link going to porn site—FIX IMMEDIATELY!”

Well this is perfect timing. My eyelid twitches as I watch the responses pop: “Where’s the link? WTF?? What porn site?? Can Bridget fix it?”

No! Bridget can’t fix it. She’s stuck in prison, AKA the doctor’s office, trying to convince her distraught four-year-old to don a paper dress. And, unfortunately, the worst is yet to come.

In walks the doctor. She’s perfectly nice. Just two hours and 45 minutes late. She does a quick exam of both boys, signs off on their shots, and hands me referrals for an allergist (for T-Rex) and an ophthalmologist (for both of them). Done!  Well, until somebody has to haul them to all those appointments.

Today, all we have left is the big event: the shots. But still. We. Have. To. Wait.

By the time the nurse arrives with her tray of doom, the kids are pelting each other with tongue depressors. I’ve long since given up.

Next is the part every parent dreads:  I have to hold down each of my children while a stranger sticks ginormous needles into their legs. In this case, five needles a kid. When she’s done, both boys are crying boulder-size tears.

“Can we go now?” I ask, head pounding, angry at the whole situation.

“No,” says the nurse. “I still gotta do your paperwork.”

The door slams shut, and I’m left with my howling, half-dressed kids. Perfect time for my ShackleBerry to start spazzing again. “Bzzzzzzzt! Bzzzzzzzt! BZZZZZZZZZT! Contract finalization meeting: 15 minutes.” Uh. No way. Not gonna make it. And no, I'm not going to call in from the doctor's office.

I turn to my hungry, tired, sniffling, needle-struck kids.

“Guys,” I say. “You know what we’re going to do? We’re not going to wait any more. We’re going to go get you some stickers. Right now!” The wailing stops for a second. “Stick-owz?” asks Punk hopefully.  I take them by the hands and march them off to find a nurse. Or tech. Or someone with access to stickers. I don’t give a continental hoot who.

It takes a while—everyone’s at lunch or something— but we finally track down our shots nurse. “We need some stickers please. NOW!!”

“Well, OK,” she says grudgingly.

“And may I also have those papers? We’ve been here over four hours.”

She hands them over, somewhat sheepishly, I think (I later find out some are missing), and we bolt. Enough is enough.

Driving the kids to school, feeding them chicken sandwiches and cupcakes I scrounged from a food cart, I make an executive decision: I am going to switch us to more expensive health insurance. Immediately if not sooner.

There is no reason to wait four and a half hours to get five lousy shots. That’s almost an hour a shot.

It's Time to Give Sleep Its Due—For the Health and Sanity of the Whole Family

06/24/2009

I once had a co-worker who considered sleep a total waste of time, and complained bitterly about having to do it.

“There are so many other productive things I could be doing,” she’d grouch. “Why spend eight hours of my day completely unconscious and drooling?”

So she didn't. She stayed up way past midnight watching “Sex and the City” reruns and Magic Bullet infomercials, shopping on eBay, and pursuing other such productive activities. And every day at work, she was, well….cranky.

My three-year-old twins are the same way. They resist naps and bed-time because they’d much rather be lobbing carrots at each other, jumping on the coffee table, or breaking the printer. The older they get, the more they refuse to settle down—and the crabbier they are later, when their sleep debt catches up with them.

Poor sleep. It doesn’t get much respect from folks at all points on the age spectrum. And in a caffeinated world driven by instant messaging, real-time news, and texting—and with collapsing boundaries between work and leisure—sleep is first to get the shaft (with healthy eating and exercising close behind). It doesn't help that our Type A culture tends to associate sleep and naps with laziness.

I am just as guilty of dissing sleep as everybody else. But unlike my twins and former co-worker, it’s not because I consider sleep a waste of time. I am, in fact, a huge fan. My problem is that, as a mom who works full time, I don’t have nearly enough time to spend on it. Consider an average week day:

• 6 a.m.  Shower, extract kids from cribs
• 8 a.m.  Haul kids to daycare, do potty duty
• 9 a.m.  Stagger into work, smelling vaguely of pee
• 5:15 p.m.  Leave work, make mad dash for daycare
• 6:30 p.m.  Feed kids dinner, argue about eating veggies, bribe them with post-dinner cookies
• 7 p.m.  Cajole kids onto potty with promises of Wii (no pun intended)
• 7:30 p.m.  Coax kids in and out of tub, emerge soaked
• 8 p.m.  Administer pre-bed milk to kids
• 8:30 p.m.  After series of empty threats, brush kids’ teeth and put them to bed
• 9 p.m.  Absently prepare parents’ dinner while attempting to watch "House"
• 9:30 p.m.  Eat dinner while watching rest of "House"
• 10 p.m.  Wash peed-on pants, attempt to clear walkway amidst toys in living room
• 11-11:30 p.m. Collapse on bed, stare blankly at book for two minutes…BLACK OUT…zzzzzzzzz

I know.  Sounds like my own personal pity party. And I don’t know how I’d do it without my husband, who shares these duties. But on this schedule, we’re lucky to get six or seven hours a night; forget the recommended eight. I realize it’s a typical schedule for parents of young children. But it’s one that can take a toll because, as noted in Harvard’s Healthy Sleep Guide, too little sleep hurts our health. 

Specifically, lack of sleep:

• Impairs our judgment and ability to learn and retain information.
• Compromises our mood and emotional well-being—hence the crankiness we associate with fatigue.
• Can raise our risk of serious accidents and injury.
• May, if chronic, lead to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even premature death.

On the flip side, plentiful, restful sleep—averaging about eight hours a night—helps boost our learning capacity, mental performance, and memory, not to mention our mood (and, not surprisingly, our relationships with the poor folks who have to deal with us every day). Good sleep can even help us lose weight and bolster athletic performance, according to a recent New York Times blog post.

Great. But the question remains, how do you get the sleep you need when your job and kids are running you like Jillian Michaels on "The Biggest Loser"? Discovery Health's Ten Tips for Better Sleep offers useful guidance, including advice to soak in a warm, relaxing bath and avoid caffeine near bed-time.

But parents of young kids need even more drastic measures to take back their sleep. For me, at least, it's going to require hard-core action. Here's my give-sleep-a-chance to-do list:
 

• Eat dinner when the kids eat dinner. I need to swear off cooking after they've gone to bed. The risk here is that I'll end up eating corndogs and mac 'n cheese along with them—I’ll have to watch that.
• Turn off the TV. Ouch, this one is going to hurt. But I know myself. Once I get sucked into a "House" episode, it's all over. I'll keep watching them as long as they roll them.
• Procrastinate on household clean-up tasks. This one I really like. Why didn't I think of this before?

But my biggest coup would be getting the kids to sleep in later, past 6:30 a.m., or even (dare I say it) 7. That way we'd all get more healthful sleep. Anybody got any suggestions?