Giving Credit Where Credit's Due

On Tuesday, somewhere between the call to the speech therapist to find out if she can indeed make a direct referral for N to be evaluated by the "preschool assessment team," and the call to Childrens Hospital (and have I ever mentioned how obscenely and ridiculously angry it makes me that I often have to write about a place that deliberately leaves out the apostrophe in its name?) to get started on the paperwork for his assessment by their developmental pediatrician, and the call to Childrens again to make an appointment for N in their urology department (his left testicle, which had descended perfectly, has decided to reascend), and the three calls from Baroy at home asking me what to do for Em, who came home with a fever from school (um...take her temperature? Give her some Tylenol? Are you really this incompetent?), and the Google search on how certain of N's facial features can be linked to developmental delays which can be cured by brain surgery...somewhere between all of that, plus work or something vaguely resembling it, I started having a panic attack.

it took me a while to recognize it, but it started adding up quickly: shallow breathing, tingling fingers, tingling cheeks and lips, tightening in my chest, my mind racing all over the place. Panic. But, luckily, I've learned from past mistakes, and I keep a couple of Xnax on me at all times, for emergency purposed. This was just such an amergency.

An hour or so later, my phone rings, and it's my mother. She wants to know what the speech therapist had to say. (Not much, there are red flags, she doesn't know what it is, but if it were her kid, she'd want someone to intervene.) We talk for a while about what I'm doing while we wait for assessments, the kinds of books I'm reading, the feeble attempts at 'therapy' that I'm making.

Near the end, my mother says, "I have to tell you, I'm really proud of you. Not only for all you're doing for N, but you just sound so calm. Your voice isn't racing and you really seem relaxed and confident about what you're doing."

I won't lie. I was tempted, for a second, to say thank you and go on. But I just couldn't do it.

I laughed. "Yeah," I said. "Isn't it amazing what half a milligram of Xnax can do?"