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...of latrophobia

My vocabulary did not include the word "latrophobia" five seconds ago, but I googled "fear of doctors" and now it does.  

We took the kids to the American Hospital of Dubai yesterday for well checks and immunizations.  Selah is quite far behind and Abram never had his two year check.  In Austin we went to the doctor all of the time.  Like, too much, probably.  80% of the time it was necessary.  The other 20% happened mainly in the first few months of Abram's life when I was a paranoid new mother.  He had bronchitis quite a few times and has even been to the doctor here twice before yesterday.  But it's been about five months (praise God!) since the last visit and both kids were not happy about the outing. 

I tried to prepare Abram by telling him that we were going to the doctor before we left so that he wouldn't be surprised.  He kept telling me that he didn't want to go to the doctor, he wanted to go to the grocery store.  I just kept saying, "Me too, buddy."  When we finally got inside the exam room, we discovered it was sterile and not kid friendly at all.  That was a big negative in Quinn's book.  Abram was crying even before anyone even hinted at having to do anything at all to him.  Getting him on the scale took forever.   Lying him down and taking his pants off?  Well, you can imagine.  Both the doctor and the nurse were pretty unfriendly and made us both wonder if pediatrics was their second choice profession.  Quinn was really not keen on the doctor we found.  I chose him because he had been trained in and worked in America.  But our pediatrician in Austin was the cat's pajamas and I don't think anyone will ever hold a candle to him (Ross Prochnow at ARC Quarry Lake, Austin friends!!) So we'll probably just always be unhappy with anyone else.  

Anyway, both kids cried during the check up that consisted of weighing, measuring, and listening and that was pretty much it.  Luckily they had no idea what was coming with the shot (they each just got one, thankfully).  It is pretty much the worst thing in the world to hold your child, knowing what is about to happen when they have no idea and then someone stabs them with a needle.  I'll admit it: I cried too.  But they survived.  Selah just got a lot of snuggles and Abram got the promise of ice cream.  We didn't make good on the promise until today when we ate cookies and ice cream in honor of my dad's birthday (Happy birthday, Papa!)  I was pretty impressed that Abram was able to hold out that long without losing it.  

So we are supposed to get a booster for Abram in a month and Selah is so far behind, we really need to do another one for her soon.  But vaccinations are expensive, man!  We may have to research other options than the American Hospital.  It was a little pricey just for the consult and it fell short in bedside manner of all the staff, for sure.  I mean, they took the kids measurements, but then didn't even give me anything with the numbers on it.  I was so busy comforting my traumatized children that I only briefly made note of each of their weights.  Selah was just over 8kg and Abram was just over 12.  That's almost 18 lbs for Selah (she's dropping down to join her brother's growth curve around the 10th percentile) and about 26.5 lbs for Abram. So apparently they are doing ok.  I wasn't expecting anything much out of this appointment.  But I felt that I needed to have them seen, since it had been awhile and our insurance pays for up to a certain amount for well checks every year, so I wanted to take advantage of that.

I'm hoping it's not that emotional for them every time they go to the doctor.  But if I had to chose between being comfortable at the doctor because we were going a lot or being afraid of the doctor because we hadn't been in awhile, I'd chose the latter. So, I guess, praise God for latrophobia!!
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