Why I Dumped the Baby Doctor

[Guest guest]

Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006

TIME

Why I Dumped the Baby Doctor

Pediatricians often treat parents like children. That's why I got a new one

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1161253-2,00.html

By MICHELLE COTTLE

I'm in love with my children's pediatrician. Yes, Dr. P. is many years my

senior, I'm pretty sure he's married, and I generally prefer my men without

beards. But there's just no resisting the man's charms. He never tires of

discussing the intimate quirks, habits and bodily functions of my beloved

offspring, listening raptly to harrowing tales of vomit and fever. He knows

all the tricks to turn my shot-phobic toddler from shrieks to smiles. (A

bouncy tennis ball and a the Train sticker usually do the job.) And

he keeps on taking my phone calls despite knowing better than almost anyone

my capacity for neurosis and hysteria. ( " Are you sure that's diaper rash and

not Ebola? " ) We talk early in the mornings (call-in hours start at 7) and on

weekends. During ear-infection season we see each other about once a week.

Lately I've been thinking about asking him to move in with me and my

husband, but I'm not sure there's room in our driveway for a third car.

Admittedly I might be less susceptible to Dr. P.'s magnetism were I not

still smarting over a bad breakup with my old pediatricians. It's not that

my exes were incompetent or unprofessional (although I could have done

without the multi-hour waits). It's more that they treated me and my husband

with the sort of arrogance and unresponsiveness that, upon consulting with

other moms, I'm discovering is not uncommon in parent-ped relationships.

Take the time I went in for my son's four-month check up. After the

requisite poking and prodding, the doctor consulted my child's chart and

casually noted that his head was growing very quickly and that we should

" keep an eye on that. " Then she was gone.

I was halfway home before I began obsessing about exactly what it was we

should be watching for. My first move was to consult the Internet, where I

was horrified to find research suggesting a correlation between fast-growing

heads and autism. Three hours later my husband came home to find me

surrounded by medical-journal articles and two steps shy of a nervous

breakdown.

We called the doctor for follow-up, but she was unavailable. Hours later, a

nurse rang to say the doc was too busy to talk--and there was really nothing

more she could tell us anyway. Hello? The woman to whom I had entrusted my

firstborn child's physical well-being had just breezily raised the specter

of his winding up like Hoffman in Rain Man. Even if she didn't have

any answers, she should have had the decency to call me back.

That said, at least my old doctors never lied to me (at least, not that I

know of), which is more than I can say for my friends' peds. Last fall a

handful of us wanted to get our tots flu shots without the mercury-based

preservative thimerosal, which some people suspect is a risk factor for

autism. Still searching for a new pediatrician, I asked a friend's doctor

about the issue and was assured that kids' flu shots never contain

thimerosal. A second friend was told the same thing by her doctor. It was

very comforting--and very untrue. Another friend's doctor, meanwhile,

informed her that all childrens' flu shots contain thimerosal. Also not

true. In reality, a less prevalent thimerosal-free version can be had for a

few extra bucks.

Since most pediatricians regard the hubbub over the possible risks of

vaccines as silly (which it may be) and the growing trend among some parents

not to vaccinate as dangerous (which it almost certainly is), I'm sure those

docs thought they were doing us hysterical moms a favor by fudging the

truth. And 20 years ago, we may never have realized what they were up to.

But these days, any parent with a PC can do a quick Google search to

determine the exact degree to which their physicians are treating them like

children. Even the most obscure medical studies are easily accessible.

Forget Dr. Spock. I can peruse Danish researchers' findings on the

connection between bed wetting and the color blue or whether being exposed

to Trump in utero makes my daughter more likely to fail the third

grade.

Is this sort of home diagnosis a good idea? No. Are Type A parents going to

do it anyway? You betcha. But this only makes it all the more urgent that we

have access to approachable, communicative, truthful medical professionals

who can talk us down off the ledge when we become convinced that our child's

hay-fever sniffles are actually the onset of avian flu. I'd offer you the

marvelous Dr. P.'s number, but I'm afraid that if his reputation spreads

he'll be swarmed by desperate mommies. I wouldn't want anything to cut into

our quality time together.