A Visit to the Doctor

So there I was explaining to my students how Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, came to the aid of Tarentum in southern Italy in 279 BC, against the Romans: While Pyrrhus defeated the Romans, he suffered heavy casualties, was defeated by the Romans at Beneventum and retreated across the Adriatic Sea; Tarentum fell to the Romans in 272 BC, “and,” I said, looking at my class, “how do you connect this to the phrase Pyrrhic victory?”

A number flashed on my cell phone (ringer set to silent): The school nurse.

In the not to distant past, when we lived in a different north Jersey town considerably closer to New York, I used to get calls from the school nurse almost every day. I might be at a meeting for new faculty, or teaching the passive voice of verbs, or driving up the long curve of the on-ramp of the Pulaski Skyway, and my phone would buzz and the familiar words of the nurse were intoned: “Mrs. Chew, Charlie bumped his head on the carpet. One of the aides took him to my office and I applied ice.”

“Okay,” I got used to saying. Because what can you say? Because of course there are at least 1001 things you want to say—why did it happen, what was he doing, didn’t this just happen yesterday, why hasn’t the behavior consultant responded yet, should I go and get him, why I am keeping my child at this school where all he does is hit his head and grab and bite and come home with a plastic bag of dirty clothes, stuff and all, why am I working——and, needless to say, the school nurse at an elementary school in an older Jersey suburb is not the person to say these things to.

Eventually, Jim and I started asking lots of questions—to each other and to the school district—and then we started making demands, and then we got lawyered up, and then we pulled Charlie out of school, and then he ended up at a private autism school where they called him the “lovely boy,” and then the school closed, and then we moved into my in-laws’ basement (in June of 2006) and Charlie started school in the in-district program that he is a happy schoolboy in today. The head-banging is all but gone, and he talks more and better than ever and, well, he’s happy.

But he’s not happy if he doesn’t go to school, due to illness or if there’s a holiday (and here comes Spring Break next week). Despite spending so much of the past two weeks with a coughing, sick mother, Charlie only seemed really sick on Saturday but well, you never know—-Charlie asks for things and talks about what he did (when prompted) and talks about the things he likes (ferris wheels, the ocean, our friend Hal, my parents, and food), but he is so far not able to use words to describe how he feels, emotionally or physically.

I was delayed in calling the nurse back as a student wanted to explain to me why he not been in class on Friday. His daughter had an ear infection. She has already been learning to negotiate and give him her reasons for doing things, he noted. “She’s two?” I asked. “18 months,” he said.

The nurse told me that Charlie had been drowsy and kept pulling on his left ear. “His left ear,” I said. “But his vital signs are fine, no fever. He went back to his class and I’ll check on him in a bit,” said the nurse. She never called back—scoliosis screening going on—-and when I checked in, she noted that he seemed to be ok as his teacher had not said anything. “I have to come early anyway because Charlie has a cello lesson,” I said and, in a few hours, was at Charlie’s school noting him, yes, pulling on his left ear and slouching in a folding chair. When the music teacher helped him fit his fingers around the bow, he sat up and his face brightened. “A-A-A—-play A-A-A,” she sang and Charlie moved his arm. “Now D-D-D—play D-D-D-D.” An aide stood by with a token board, which wasn’t used; Charlie played each string, favoring the G and C strings. When it was time to go, he grabbed the music teacher’s hand and pulled her out the door after him: “He’s pretty strong,” I said and she laughed.

He took the bus home and I called the doctor’s office and got a 4.20pm appointment. In the past, I would have tried to explain to myself and others about why this was unnecessary, about how Charlie really was actually fine and healthy, maybe the ear-pulling was just a passing thing: I would have been on the defensive. I realize now that this worry had little to do with the actual doctor’s appointment, and everything to do with the difficulties of getting Charlie to wait in the waiting room, where he used to lie down on the benches and almost kick the other, sick kids; stomp and run around; ignore the videos; moan, cry, and groan (with a runny nose). Waiting in the exam room was but the next part of the ordeal: The small, confining space was a place that Charlie only wanted to escape from, and he’d be beyond antsy and fitful, shredding the paper on the exam table into confetti. By the time the nurse took his vitals, and the doctor finally appeared and the final struggle—holding onto Charlie so that parts of his body could be partially examined—had ensued, he and I were both anything but fine. Grabbing his coat and mine, we would hurry back to the refuge of the car and to the pharmacy.

Since then, Charlie has gotten much better at waiting, and I’ve learned, once we have the doctor’s word about his medical state, we can start to see if other things might be leading him to pull an ear or what have you. So, after he had run his “what did you do at school today” card through the Language Master and heated up gluten-free pancakes for himself in the microwave, off we went.

“No,” said Charlie as we drove up to the doctor’s office, which is in an old Victorian house. But he got his backpack and followed me in, and sat by the window so he could look at the car. He was quiet as younger children raced around the room, or leaned weakly against their tired mothers. Eventually it was his turn to go to an exam room and up we went. We were lucky to be in a room at the front and Charlie again could look down at the car, and occupied himself in smoothing down the paper on the exam table, and lying on his back and stomach and grinning. “Hi doctor,” he said when the doctor appeared.

I explained what was going on and the doctor nodded. “What’s the best way to examine him? Do you want to hold him in your lap?”

“Uh, I think if you just did it while he’s standing up, that would be fine,” I said.

“I think he must weigh more than you,” said the doctor.

“He will by the time he’s 11–two more months,” I said.

She looked in each ear, with Charlie keeping quiet still; no ear infection. She looked in his throat; fine. She put the stethoscope on his back and front (that made Charlie giggle as if being tickled).

A nurse knocked and the doctor rushed out and then came in and then out, saying something about antibiotics. Charlie’s eyes followed her movements. “Hi doctor!” She returned and said,

“I think he’s fine.”

I nodded and asked when we had last seen her? (It’s a practice of several doctors.)

The doctor checked Charlie’s chart and said “2005. He’s a healthy boy.”

“Yes, he is,” I said.

Charlie grabbed his backpack and we walked back to the car. Once home, he opened the freezer door and asked me “bread?”, ate, and went to use his laptop. “Mom, I need help! I need help. Blue ferris wheel, Dad!” I sat down beside him and we talked about the photos, some of which were taken five years or so years ago at the Mall of America in Minnesota and some at Charlie’s eighth birthday party, the last time we had a big party for him: Charlie got so anxious about the parties that the month before was a fretful time of tantrums, and his ninth and tenth birthdays were celebrated quietly.

“We’ll have a party this year. Maybe bowling,” I said.

“Bowling. Party,” said Charlie.

“We can invite everyone in your class. We can even invite Hal,” I said. “And other friends too.”

“Other friends too. Hal! Birthday party,” said Charlie and then—as the screen had gone completely black, due to him pushing a key too many times on the keyboard—”I need help! Mom.”

“I can fix it,” I said, and I did. And then I stretched out on the floor on my elbows and woke up some time later to Charlie clicking away at the photos, and talking, just as clear as we used to dream he would.

At the end of the day, a string of such little victories adds up to the only kind of win I’m interested in.