Maggie’s kindergarten checkup
Maggie’s heading to kindergarten in a couple of months and part of this involves getting a quick physical and some vaccines. I picked her up at school and changed her as it looked like she’d been in a food fight and lost and we headed to the doctor’s office.
Maggie starts “performing” as a little kid when she gets nervous, this involves a baby voice, making her eyes as wide as possible, and then laughing like a madwoman until something catches her attention. She was performing quite a bit in the waiting room and a little into the first exams.
Took the hearing and eye exams like a champ, blood pressure was absurd so they remeasured it and it was fine, weighed in, and then it was time for a blood test. This didn’t go so well.
The nurse pricked Maggie’s right finger. I don’t know if this is a King exclusive or not but we don’t bleed much from the right hand. If I’m bleeding from the right for more than a few seconds that cut is probably down to the bone. Same appeared to be the case with Maggie. It was like getting blood from a stone.
What should have been done in about a minute lasted nearly eight minutes until my little 5yo was crying for it to stop. Was not pleasant but she quit paying attention pretty quickly when she got a bandaid.
Next we met the doctor. Maggie once again performed this cute kid routine and I was about to explain to the doctor that no, she didn’t actually speak like that, she was just playing a character, when she popped out of it after being asked a question.
The doctor and her got into a conversation about bones, muscle groups, and a couple of other things that supposedly the doctor didn’t expect a five year old to be talking about. Seemed pretty on par with the kids in her class interests so maybe she’s in the weird class. Meh.
Then it was shot time. Three jabs, three bandaids, over and done with pretty quickly and other than about 20 seconds of ows this was not much of an event.
The nurse brought us a cup. They wanted a urine sample. The doctor said this was ok if we couldn’t get it as she seemed healthy but they wanted to test for a few things (assuming diabetes.) We went to the potty, tried to figure it out, and Maggie did a stand up job, literally.
She got a small amount of pee on her hand and I moved to turn on the sink and turned and she had just finished wiping it all over her shirt. Bright yellow pee, shirt worn 30 minutes. Head desk.
Rinsed the shirt out a bit, got the kiddo back in whack, and headed back where we got some of the paperwork.
We talked a little about what the shots were for. She didn’t remember my friend’s dad who had polio, but I ran her through some of the things that happened to people who had it and let her know she’d never have to have that happen to her as we’d eradicated the disease nearly completely on the planet.
She seemed happy with that.
Her temperature got a little up there later in the day but nothing much happened. The next day she woke up and her legs were sore. We did a little ibuprofin which was probably a good thing as she’s somewhat of a grump today.
