"You'll never be a proper doctor.
I want to marry a proper doctor."
-- "Stella," Doctor In The House
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| Barbie, Joe, and a big syringe 3-3-14 |
Being married to a doctor definitely has its benefits.
I can't even count how many trips to the emergency room we've skipped because my husband made the diagnosis, administered the medicine, removed the lesion or stitched the cut right here at home.
Like Sunday when I thought I was having an aneurysm.
I was working at my computer, feeling normal, when my vision started to blur and I felt a little dizzy. I thought maybe I was sitting funny and cutting off blood flow or something, so I stood up for a few seconds, which made me dizzy-er, so I sat back down.
I tried to keep working, but the harder I tried to focus, the more things got steadily worse. I called my husband out to the computer room and there were two of him. In fact, there were two of everything.
I got up and made my way to the couch, walking like a drunk sailor after too many spins on the Tilt-A-Whirl. I sat there a little while but the room kept spinning and I kept seeing double.
My husband looked at my pupils with his doctor-looker-light-thingy while I tried to follow his finger with my eyes. They were all jumpy and not tracking right. He had to take a phone call because he has other lives to save besides mine, and that's when my arms went all tingly and my chest closed up and I was pretty sure it was The Big One.
He checked my blood pressure with his arm-squeezer-pumper-upper, and it was normal, so he told me to lay down and rest. But he sat in the chair and watched over me, which concerned me a little.
I must have seemed OK, because he wandered out to the kitchen to fix supper, which I was in no condition to do, when the puking began.
And kept going.
And going.
Someone brought me a trash can and my husband sent our son racing to his office to get a vial of some stop-puking medicine. By the time the medicine arrived I was still dry-heaving and pretty delirious. Then I felt a pinch, a jab and a burn as the syringe released its magical contents into my ass, and soon, the nausea stopped and I fell asleep on the couch, in my clothes, for the rest of the night.
Diagnosis: Inner ear infection.
He knew it all along.
By morning I was fine. A little woozy and very tired, but fine.
If I'd wound up in the emergency room, I'd have had a CT scan of my head, an EKG, the magic medicine, an IV, plus a hefty bill for all that alphabet soup -- all for the same diagnosis that I got right here in the comfort of my own home.
"Is there a doctor in the house?"
You bet your ass. And it's a damn good thing there is.
