"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

At least that is how I felt yesterday morning. Miss S and I were in the doctor's office for the third time in three days. She had been having some rouble hearing for several days, so The Husband and I decided that a visit was warranted on Thursday. The girls and I went to our "new" doctor here in town, and things went well. It turned out that Miss S's right ear was a little red but she did not need antibiotics as she had not been running much of a fever. The nice lady doctor patiently explained her treatment suggestions to me, including telling me to call her if Sarah's fever got higher. I felt pretty good coming out of there.

Firday morning dawned and all seemed fine. Until we were ready to walk out the door to school. I decided to check Miss S one more time and the fever was back. ARGH! Plan B ... take Miss M to school, and keep Miss S occupied but resting. She did rest, pretty well in fact. I thought we were going to make it without another trip to see the doctor. No such luck. The fever just kept going up. I called the doctor's office, then had to call The Husband because I wasn't sure that I had understood the message on the machine. It seems that our doctor takes off about 3 hours during the day on Fridays. She does make it up by staying late though. The kicker was that I could not even speak to her until 4:30 PM! At least we got in to see her pretty quickly, and Sarah's ear was worse. We walked to the pharmacy and bought our Amoxicillin, then bought dessert at the pastry store. Everything was going to be okay. (Famous last words?)

It turns out that Miss S is allergic to Amoxicillin, just like her Mom. After a few scary moments as we realized exactly what was happening, and that she was still breathing just fine, we dosed her with Benadryl to stop the itching. Then I called AuntT. She is the family expert on allergic reactions. She assuered me that everything was going to be okay, and that we had not missed anything. Okay, so another trip to the nice lady doctor on Saturday morning. We could do this ... except that the nice lady doctor doesn't work on Saturday mornings. One has to call the doctor who shares office space with her. Not really a partner, but they share a waiting room. I call, naively thinkning that this doctor will just write a script for another antibiotic. No. we have to have an appointment because he needs to see what is wrong. So we go, just Miss S and me (The Husband took Miss M Christmas shopping).

This is a man doctor, and evidently Miss S does not like French man doctors. She was okay until it was time for him to examine her. Then she FLIPPED OUT! I don't think I have ever seen her react like that to anyone. He eventually gets a look in her ears, and says, Yes she has an infection. DUH! Now we have to discuss the medicateion, and this is where we failed to communicate. There are evidently 2 forms of Amoxicillin in France. Okay I get that. What I didn't understand was that he was prescribing the other form (or at least I think that is what he prescribed). The upshot was another reaction.

This is not what I am used to in the States. I am used to being able to call our pediatrician's office, and actually talk to someone, day or night. I am used to a doctor being able to look at my child's record, or at least being able to explain what has been happening for the past few days, and having the doctor say "Okay, we've tried that. Now let's try ..." I am used to being able to have a prescription called in for me without another visit to a doctor just because that doctor hasn't even seen my child.

I did learn some new vocabulary during this process.