Let's blog MAKING a PEDIATRICIAN APPOINTMENT

Let’s blog MAKING a PEDIATRICIAN APPOINTMENT.

For some moms, making a pediatrician appointment is a daily ritual.  The calendar is OUT, READY, and color-coded per child per activity per month, day, and by the hour.

For this mom, this HALF-A-MOM, making this appointment is most likely spent on the morning commute. 

Weaving in and around all the roads, always a few miles over the speed limit.

Or twelve. 

Or TWELVE miles over the speed limit.

Making this flipping appointment will be the biggest challenge of my morning because 

I have exactly 25 minutes before my work day begins.  If I don’t get to speak to a LIVE person, chances are my sick kid will be seen at the nearest emergency care facility or I’ll be pulling an all-nighter.

You might ask me, “why the hell don’t you just ask Dad to do it?” 

I know. I could.

But if Dad does the actual SCHEDULING of the appointment, GUARANTEED he will take the next available appointment and of course, that will be when my seven year old daughter with the ear infection is in eighth grade and has boobs.

If I’m lucky I will hear the words, “good morning, you have reached the office of Dr. Osh Kosh B’Gosh, can I help you?” 

But let’s be real.  Dr. Osh Kosh will not be picking up any phone until you listen to all two hundred and forty options.

Once I hear all the options and I don’t know which one to pick or I just got distracted singing me some classic Olivia Newton John on Magic 106.7, I just press TWO. That’s always the safe number. The closer you are to ONE, the better.  ONE is reserved  for family members and the nearest delivery joint.

Sometimes I listen to the options and by the time they are through I will have aged two years and the VOICE OVER  appoints me to a directory by last name. By then, the only extension I want to dial is 3 dash 8 and I am ready to tell Dr. Osh Kosh to shove his B’Gosh up his ass.

Back to the receptionist.  If you have shit luck like me, she will NOT ask if she can help you.  She will ask you if you can HOLD.

This is a working mom’s NEMESIS.  

HOLD?  Can I hold? Hell NO I can’t hold. I’m either calling you because my kid’s fever is at 127.5 or she hasn’t pooped in seventeen and a half days.

We half-a-moms don’t F around.

If you choose to hold, she might just come back, but it will be eleven minutes later and you find yourself asking “Hello?” thinking you missed something or they flipping forgot about you. 

You might even hang up and decide to call them on your other break.  The LONGER break.

That being your seven minute lunch break.   FOUR hours from now. Problem with that is, all the stay-at-home moms have beat you to all the available appointments for that day. 

Let’s face it.  Scoring a pediatrician appointment is like entering a radio contest to win a jackpot of “4pm works for me!” 

If she decides to answer, you will find yourself in SURVEY HELL.  She will ask you questions, some of which you cannot for the life of you remember, like how high your child’s temperature was last Tuesday or her birthdate.

Spoiler alert: if you’ve been awake for the last decade like me, this little tidbit is LONG GONE.   That information is wiped out, like the aftermath of childbirth, in the time of B.C. as in “Before Children.”

I swear that’s why they make parents take a WRITTEN birth certificate with you from the hospital. Because you will need this date in writing. Once you leave that hospital after childbirth, you are 30,000 steps closer to an early diagnosis of alzeimer’s. 

I’ve in fact, given my very OWN birthdate when they ask for my child’s.  I don’t care that it would make her 41 years of age.  It’s a date I know.

After taking down five and a half pages of information, including symptoms and your child’s astrological sign, she will inform you that a NURSE will be contacting you.

It’s a good thing here, half-a-moms, that you are on a cell phone.  You can yell, curse, and swear like a Dr. Suess, and you can blame it on Magic 106.7 or traffic.

Nevertheless, you give Dr. Osh Kosh the best number you can be reached at, which is usually 1-800-Looneyville, and wait for the next SURVEY.

Finally, a nurse will call.  This, of course, will be when you are taking attendance, assisting twenty-five eight year olds with bloody noses and morning math, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Dr. Osh Kosh’s nurse will then ask you the same set of survey questions as the receptionist but with more concern. She will ask about the 127.5 fever and if you have given your child any Tylenol and you reply “yes” and that you also took a few dozen mild sedatives for yourself.

After the survey, you will not win any prize. In fact, you might not even win an APPOINTMENT.  Dr. Osh Kosh’s nurse will then decide if you are WORTHY of an appointment at all.   This is usually about the time I have reached full capacity in the quarter jar.

This nurse may even have the audacity to ask if you can HOLD.

Take it from me, a seasoned half-a-mom, don’t  HOLD.  You tell her absolutely not, and you tell her you need an appointment STAT. Even if it makes you sound like a bitch.  It’s your child for goodness sake.

Still, it won’t matter if you are the MOTHER of all bitches.

You will tell them you have a JOB.

That gets out at 3.

In the afternoon.

And THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL you can ask for more time off because you’ve already taken two, three days already to play Nurse Betty.

It won’ t matter. 

It won’t matter for shit.  

Because when Dr. Osh Kosh FINALLY grants you that appointment it will most definitely be

during your JOB

at exactly 11am

in the morning.