Visit to the Doctor (Or Two Hours from Hell)

Well, school starts up for Quinn and Alex next Monday, and knowing Alex couldn't register without up-to-date immunizations, we headed for the doctor's office Thursday morning. Prior to leaving, I told Alex via the computer what was going to happen. He voiced some resistance, so we called Marissa's friend who speaks Ukrainian to speak to Alex a little further. Then we were on the computer again, with Gage, Marissa, Quinn, and I attempting to calm his fears.

"It will hurt just a tiny bit, like a pinch. The doctors are nice. The shots will help you not become sick. You have to have the shots to go to school. Everyone gets these shots. If you don't have them, you can't go to school, " on and on and on.

He wrote back to us through the computer, "I'm scared."

We hugged him and said, "It's okay. It will be okay." We told him he needed three shots.

So he got showered and dressed, and away we went. Fortunately Marissa agreed to come with us for moral support for Alex. (Alex LOVES Marissa.)

We arrived, and the doctor's office rounded up an employee from downstairs that speaks Polish. Surprisingly, they could communicate quite well. Alex's vision was great in both eyes. He weighed in at a whopping 67 pounds (below the percentile chart for a 12-year-old) and measured 56 inches tall (eleventh percentile).

Then Alex donned a gown. I had to coax him to take off his pants. Alex always wears two layers of pants, something they did at the orphanage to keep warm. He took the first layer off, and we had to coax to get the second pair off. (He still looks skinny even with all those clothes on.)

The woman doctor looked in his eyes, ears, listened to his heart and so on, all the usual stuff, then told me she wanted to check for hernias and needed to check his privates. (By this time, the Polish-speaking woman had left.) I told Alex "touch" (he knows that word) and I pointed. This is where things started to get interesting. He absolutely refused and started to panic. We tried calming him down, and after about ten minutes, I said, "Okay. We're going to skip this part of the examination. We'll have to worry about it later."

The doctor said she wanted a blood draw at the lab, a stool sample, etc. to check for TB and anything else that Alex might have picked up in Ukraine. I agreed to take care of that later.

Then Alex got dressed, and the nurse came in to administer SEVEN immunizations, and all hell broke loose. We cajoled, coaxed, bribed, everything we could think of. For 67 pounds, Alex is strong and wiry. He had the look of terror in his eyes.

Let me digress. When Alex was in our home in August, he took a spill while learning to ride a bike and got a NASTY gouge in his knee. It was deep and big, and the little kid never shed a tear, just sort of whimpered, but something about those needles sent him over the top, and I mean OVER THE TOP.

To make a long story short, it took three big, strong nurses to get those shots in Alex. Marissa and I tried to participate, but when he looked at me with terror and pleading, I was afraid of what it might do to our relationship, and Marissa and I ended up backing off. It was an absolute wrestling match, one big nurse holding his upper body, one holding his lower body, and one jabbing the needles in as quickly as possible. After the 45-minute ordeal was over, Alex was really mad and looked at me with pure hatred. He refused to get his shoes and coat on and sat in the corner of the examination room and pretty much communicated that he would live there the rest of his life. Marissa and I went to the waiting room. Eventually he came to the waiting room, sat down, and refused to move. I ended up dragging him to the car, and by this time, I had had it. He refused to put on his seat belt, and I yelled, "Put on your seat belt." Marissa ended up putting it on for him. He cried all the way home, and I wondered what we had gotten ourselves into.

Then I began to wonder what was in this little boy's past that made him so afraid of needles. I wondered if he would ever talk to me again or if he would hate me the rest of his life. He went straight to his room when we got home. I let him cool for about 30 minutes. By this time Michael had come home early (New Year's Eve), and we both went down to check on him. He was nailing the wheels to a Pine Wood Derby car!! Within five minutes, he returned to his normal affectionate self, and all was forgiven! I think he was a little embarrassed. I talked to him on the computer again and told him he needed to take some pain killer and to use his arms a lot. He was totally compliant.

Then he hugged me and said this. "Ukraine mom," and made the motions of slapping my face over and over and over again, and then said, "Go to sleep," and acted out going to sleep. I said, "What?" He repeated the whole thing. I'm not sure what it all meant, but I'm sure I will find out in the future.

We ended up having a wonderful New Year's Eve with our family. Michael cooked us a gourmet dinner, steak, shrimp, mushrooms, potatoes, fruit salad, etc. (We missed you, Eric. We sure wished you could have been there.) Then we played around-the world ping pong for hours. Alex was darling, on his best behavior. I think he was asking us for our forgiveness.