Smart Patient, Dumb Doctor

Samantha has this white spot on her tongue. I noticed it when she was really little, like, a month old. Of course, the worst things ran through my mind: Cancer. I brought it up at her next doctor's appointment. The pediatrician told me not to worry about it. Watch it, but don't worry. And it's not cancer. So I did. Nothing changed.

Many months later, I was watching Oprah episode about medical mistakes and being a smart patient. She had a guest on who was a famous chef who had had oral cancer that started as a small white spot on his tongue! He almost had to have his tongue removed!! Needless to say, I freaked out and brought it up to the doctor again. She referred me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist (ENT).

This guy was supposed to be a pediatric and adult ENT, but I don't think he's ever seen a baby in his life. When he started to examine Samantha, who was sitting on my lap, he said, and I am not making this up, "Open up!" Then when she didn't "open up," he said, "Say ahhhh!" He was dead serious, too.

Uh, dude, she's 9 months old.

Although that was the point of this post, I should probably tell how the story ends. The ENT doesn't know what the spot is. He says he's 99% sure it's nothing and he's not willing to put a baby under in order to biopsy it (too much risk). Unfortunately, this makes me nervous since the famous chef's point was that his oral cancer could've been avoided had they just biopsied the small white spot in the first place!

At Least I'm Dressed

Some people may think that being a stay-at-home-mom (at least temporarily) would afford me LOTS of time to blog (or do whatever), but what I've learned in my almost 11 months of not working is that I barely have a little time to get stuff done, let alone blog. Hence, my last post was more than a month ago.



Samantha is now an expert crawler and stander, so I can't leave her alone for a second. Actually, it's she who won't leave me alone for one second. She's kinda a mamma's girl (in Italian this is called a "mammona"). I can barely leave her in her play area to go get my morning cup of coffee. She starts whining and then crawls all the way into the kitchen just in time to have to crawl all the way back. I've tried explaining to her that if she just stayed put, she could save herself a lot of energy as I am coming right back, but she's stubborn. ; )

Anyway, the point of this post was supposed to be about how when I was rocking her to sleep this morning for her morning nap, I was making a mental list of what I was going to accomplish in the 1 - 1.5 (sometimes 2) hours Samantha was sleeping. Here's the list:

1. check email
2. get dressed
3. move car (don’t call DCFS on me, please)
4. make phone calls
5. put on makeup (which I normally don't do, but we were meeting up with friends later on)
6. fold laundry (and watch 15 minutes of one of the many Oprahs I have recorded)
7. vacuum downstairs
8. clean downstairs bathroom

She fell asleep and off I went. I literally move in fast-forward to get as much done as possible. I got halfway thru #5 and she woke up which means that #6 would have to be done with her in the room (which takes twice as long since her new thing is taking the laundry out of the basket and scattering it around the room).

It's now the next day and I still haven't had time to do #7 and 8.

So now you know why I haven't called you back or why if you come over I may have half my makeup on, laundry strewn about my living room, and nothing is vacuumed or clean. I do promise to be dressed, though, and to have checked my email, though. Those are always first on my list. ( :