Playing Dr. for real

Little Isabel came up to me Saturday morning: "My hand hurts, Papa, you be the Doctor." A common enough request from our children, as they get into enough scrapes with our fast-and-furious play that my doctoring ("pretend!" as Elena Marie often insists) gets them from pouting to playing in no time.

When I did see that her (right) hand had actually swollen to be about 50% larger than the other, it was time to call in the big guns:

"Go show your mother your hand."

One phone call later, we, Isabel and I, rushed off to the pediatricians' -- Dr. Thiede (not Dr. Lam, as she has now been married two years, people, get with the program!) diagnosed a mild infection, proscribed the usual (hand held above the heart), but changed her mind and sent us on our way to the hospital for X-rays when I recounted a incident a few days prior involving a slammed door and her hand.

The receptionist, like Dr. Thiede, was all kindness: how do these health-care professionals so joyfully sacrifice their lives? And, Isabel, being prepped by moiself (that is French) about having pictures taken of her hand, was completely accomodating. I reviewed the X-rays and observed no fractures (yes, one of my many talents is the ability to read X-ray charts to the utter amazement of the techs), but the tech had the radiologist confirm this. Confirmed.

So, off we skipped to the van via the "secret path" (a flower garden encircling the hospital's sidewalk entrance) but we expedited our skipping with the bees became a little too curious (maybe Isabel looks like a honey pot to the bees? that's the way she looks to me, too ...).

So as per the original diagnosis, a couple of days of rest with an elevated hand produced two effects: reduced swelling and special Papa time.