Annual Well-Visit Check-up: An Opportunity to Build Our Immunities

The children went in for their annual check-ups yesterday. As we suspected, they have grown, despite the lack of any vegetables in their diets except the tomatoes in ketchup and pizza sauce. They have normal reflexes, see and hear reasonably well, and neither one could pass the "drunk" test (they were supposed to walk a straight line with one foot directly in front of the other. Neither child saw the point in this.). Ed and I passed the parental questioning portion, responding correctly to questions about whether we smoke, keep loaded guns lying around, let the children watch lots of naughty television, etc. Ed wasn't sure the last was properly a health care question, and I just thought it was funny given that there was a pornographic soap opera playing on the television in the office lobby. K. got three shots to vaccinate her against measles, mumps, rubella, polio, diphtheria, plague, ick, and other stuff I forget. The nurse said she would probably have a fever and maybe a rash as a reaction. As it happens, K. is fine, but T. has been running a fever today. We spent our 45 minute wait sitting outside the office, on a bench (partly to try to avoid germs and partly because of the extremely inappropriate tv), but the examination room, and the doctor and nurses were probably crawling with germs. With luck, though, they are now set for another doctor-free year.