Privacy

Today's topic is privacy. I was listeneing to a healthcare discussion panel (I was driving and my darling had left the radio tuned to C-span) and privacy was the subtopic. And I had a kind of post traumatic stress flash back. When the one pictured above in the orange pants was 5 he had to be evaluated by the local child developement experts. Now, you should know that long before Hugh Laurie was on House I subscribed to the same myth promulgated there that given enough information -especially the kind you are hesitant to share - everything will fall into place and the doctors will have some kind of epiphany and simply know all they need to know to fix everything. And I really wanted things fixed. So when the polite young woman asked if there was a family history of I don't even remember what I helpfully, but with great trepidation, offered up to her that my father had been an alcoholic. Dead for 30+ years and he had pretty much stopped drinking by the time I was born but still ... I added that I only mentioned it in case it raised any red flags, and asked that if it did not could she just ignore it. Of course, she assured me, it really didn't add any information they needed and it need not be officially noted. I'm sure you can see this coming (but we didn't), the first page of their report -to go into the official school records said, "The patient is a 5 year old child whose maternal grandfather was an alcoholic." I think it took another few sentences to get to the part where he (orange pants not maternal grandfather) was born at 25 weeks gestation, weighing 1 lb 7 oz.
And let's not even talk about his first hospitaliztion for a shunt revision and the doctor who included us in his "Grand rounds." So there I sat at 25, trying to nurse a baby who wasn't very good at it (that made 2 of us) and connected to IVs and we were surrounded by the old doctor and half a dozen new doctors and made exhibit A. I remember desperately trying to pull things back in place while the one female in the group cringed at the back of the crowd. Medical privacy.
So that should at least help explain why I hide my face here and use one of the many aliases my mother thoughtfully provided me by changing her mind several times about what to call me. That and the fact that this was the only photo with a really good shot of my shoes. I have no idea why my daughter was hiding other than to follow the rule that all 4 kids can NEVER look at the camera at the same time.