The one where I act like a mama bear

Squidge had an appoint­ment with a gp today, not her reg­u­lar one as she was booked until late next week.  Squidge has been limp­ing for about a week and a half.  I went to see her gp a cou­ple of days after the limp appeared and was told to give it a few days and  if it was still there to come back.  Still there I came back.  So what hap­pened when we get there? 

GP: I can’t see it.  Are you sure she has a limp? 

ME: It’s her left leg, there you see!  SHE’S LIMPING. 

GP: No sorry can’t see it.  It looks like nor­mal tod­dler walk­ing to me.

ME: You mean most tod­dlers walk like they’re drag­ging their foot behind them??  She has a limp.  She’s had it for over a week.  Dr V saw it and said to come back if it didn’t go away.  (mean­while Squidge is run­ning around and we’re look­ing at her) I know I’m not imag­ing this because peo­ple– STRANGERS say things like “does she always walk like that” and “is her leg OK? It looks like she’s limp­ing” or ” are you OK sweetie, do you have an owie on your leg”!! 

I begin to pack up my things and thank him when there’s a knock on the door.  It’s Dr V our usual doc, YAY!! So he asks her about it and she con­firms that yes Squidge did have a limp last week and that she thought if it didn’t go away it was tod­dler hip dis­place­ment (or some­thing to that effect). So he’s refer­ring us to see an pedi­atric orthopaedic spe­cial­ist.  It’s a good thing Dr. V showed up when she did because I was going to walk out and make another appoint­ment with another doc and I would have con­tin­ued to do that until some one lis­tened to me.   I’m  with my daugh­ter all the time and I KNOW when some­thing is wrong– don’t f%#k with me regard­ing my daugh­ter– I’ll cut you!! Grrrr!!! 

I get a lit­tle  frus­trated with the docs here in the UK.  Please don’t get me wrong I am sooo grate­ful for the National Health Ser­vice.  I don’t have the think about health-care and health costs.  If I have a prob­lem I just call and we’re usu­ally seen in a cou­ple of days.  My frus­tra­tion comes in their reac­tive atti­tude towards medicine.  It’s a lit­tle dif­fi­cult adjust­ing to a dif­fer­ent way of doing things.  In the US they’re much more proac­tive.  If I brought Squidge in for some­thing they’d be all over her.  At the end of the day I pre­fer the NHS because  at least I HAVE health cov­er­age.   Any­hoo rant  over hope­fully we’ll have an appoint­ment with the pedi­atric orthopaedic per­son sooner rather than later.

As for those that asked about how Squidge got her limp.  I don’t know, she just woke up one morn­ing with a limp.  She’s not com­plain­ing, doesn’t wince in pain and con­tin­ues to run around and play like she nor­mally does.  All I know is that I can’t stand to look at her when she limps, she looks bro­ken and it breaks my heart!

I’ve been work­ing on get­ting my pho­tographs in  order.  I take pho­tos almost every singe day but I haven’t printed any since June.  I also want to frame them and hang them on the wall by the stairs.  So off we went to Ikea to pick up some frames-I want them all in black frames and knew that Ikea would have some­thing I liked.

I still have another 10 or so to frame but ran  out of money. I’m kick­ing myself for head­ing out to Ikea with­out my debit card!!  I also picked up an 8x10 frame for the ‘pro­fes­sional’ photo I had done on Fri­day.  Yes folks it’s only taken us 19 months to have a pro­fes­sional  photo done.  From what I could see all  I need is a black and a white sheet and I can do what they do!  I’m sure you guessed it folks, I also picked up a white sheet (a fleece blan­ket actu­ally) while I was at Ikea. 

Just some pho­tos from Head over Heels (did you know that Melanie Brown took her kids there when she was in Man­ches­ter– Oooh la la!) yesterday.