Doctor Misery

"Joy, temperance, and repose, slam the door on the doctor's nose."  -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We spent an hour in hell yesterday afternoon, a special kind of hell that you know all day is going to be awful and then it totally fulfills your expectations.  We took Maeve in to get her allergies re-tested.

I have SO much respect for parents who must regularly take their toddlers to the doctor, because toddlers often hate nurses, doctors, and anyone who needs them to hold still or be examined in any way.  Maeve started saying "No no no no" when she got out of the car and realized where we were. 

Allergy tests are particularly hard on little ones, since their sweet skin gets scratched with things that will give them hives, then they (and you) have to wait fifteen minutes and distract them from the fact that their back itches something awful.  Maeve cried from the moment the nurse measured her height (38 inches!!) until after we left the building, basically. 

And I got to hold her while she had her blood drawn, poor sweetheart, which nearly killed both of us.  Gosh, but she's strong!  And since I have to get blood drawn for my thyroid all the time, I had a lot of sympathy for her.  God bless the techs who got her on the first try!  

We gave her suckers and marshmallows, which helped a little, but really it was Daddy and I who needed a treat for being brave little soldiers afterwards, so we got Chipotle. 

And the good news is that her egg allergy and her milk allergy are diminishing, and it looks like maybe she's not allergic to rice at all.  If her blood test comes back clear for rice, we can start giving it to her at home.  And if her milk numbers are low enough, I can bring her in to the allergy center and give her a little milk at a time under observation and if she doesn't get hives or get wheezy, we can let her have milk, too.  But Daddy and I mostly talked about how happy we are we don't have to do that again for another year, it was totally grueling and miserable.

But today is a clean start, a snow day, so Maeve and I will be holed up inside putting dollies down for naps and fingerpainting and watching the snow pile up on the bushes outside.

Back to "normal"...