PKU

Some people have no brains. Ever heard the Bill Engvall "where's your sign" comedy CD? Yes, totally hilarious, but onto my point... I got a call from my pediatrician's office yesterday and I wanted to crawl through the phone, slap her in the face, and then come back home. Now, granted, my extreme paranoia probably didn't help the situation, but I would still like to blame most of it on her. Let me explain.

I'm not sure if those of you without children are familiar with this, but they do a test on babies called a PKU. They stick the baby's heel and send off the blood samples to test for an inability to break down a certain amino acid (it can cause several severe problems in baby if it goes untreated) Anyway, the do the test at the hospital after the baby is born and then again at the 2 week check up. Well, the nurse calls me and the conversation is as follows:

Nurse - "Mrs. Martin? This is so and so at blah pediatrics"
Me - "Yes, how are you?"
N - "fine. The reason I'm calling is, remember the blood test we did on Maggie Claire last time she was in? The one where we prick her heel?"
Me - "Yes." - growing ever more nervous
N - "Well, there was a problem. The test was sent back to us and..."

At this point I am FREAKING out. The nurse then went on to say they simply didnt get enough blood on the test and would have to redo it. COULDNT YOU HAVE STARTED THE CONVERSATION WITH THAT???!!!! I mean, what kind of idiot starts a conversation with a newborn mother about something being wrong with a very serious test??? Now, you may be thinking "well what did you expect her to say Jessica"? Well, I'll tell you - "Hi Mrs. Martin. I just wanted to let you know that we didn't get enough blood on the PKU test we did and we need you to bring Maggie Claire back in". There ya go. Instead, this woman put me through at least 30 seconds of torture thinking my child had some disease or was mentally retarded. Again, for those of you without children, this may not seem like a long time or a big deal. However, 30 seconds of thinking something is wrong with your precious child feels like an eternity. Even after she clarified the problem, my heart was still racing and it took a while for it to return to normal. Not fair. In the future, please choose your words carefully. I call down there all the time - you know I am slightly psychotic. Do you need to make a note in my chart or something? Go ahead. "Mrs. Martin is highly paranoid and cannot handle the stress of something being wrong with her child. Please choose your words carefully and do not ever let her think something is going on unless we are for sure." Totally fine with me. I don't mind being the crazy mommy. haha. Well, I guess it kinda sucks, but its just my personality! Humor me pediatric people. Thanks.