Classifieds: Services Wanted

It's rare that I miss having another adult around, but today was an occasion.

Got the call about my bloodwork: the nurse told me that the doctor told her to tell me to report immediately to the ER for further testing and a sonogram. Liver levels were "through the roof," and when I pressed for more details I got, "everything's off," which can't be good but doesn't mean anything to me, either. Still, that's all I'd need to hear to beget myself to the ER, if only I had someone to mind the kids (my folks are in Norway) and had health insurance that would cover a "non-emergency" ER visit (since that's what it is if I'm not in acute pain or suffering from acute injury.) It turns out, though, that that's not the kind of health insurance I have. For what I have, with my insurance--my celebrated, paper piece of mind--I have to go to an ER in Annapolis after first getting a complete physical with a primary care doc in Annapolis. Which--the latter--I intended to do, of course, back when I thought we were moving.

We are not. Have I mentioned that?

So tonight I'm sitting still, waiting to hear back from the HR people at work about whether they can switch me over to a plan that makes more sense for one who works from a distance. If they can't, I hit the road tomorrow night. I'm checking the whites of my eyes for signs of yellow, and looking at my veiny feet for signs of swelling, and poking and tapping and warding off badness with sheer will, the way people will. I'm spending too much time on WebMD, as if anyone ever came away from that site feeling reassured.

And the kids are chattering about Field Day on Friday and Closing House on Thursday, and a certain presentation, and a certain field trip to the beach, asking me again and again if I'll be there for them--if I'll miss them like I did once before for a business trip. I know, I know--it's just a relay race, a tug-of-war, a gathering up of art and writing projects that would come home whether or not I was there to pick them up. They'll live. Health first.

But it's the end of the school year--a celebration, an accomplishment. And joy, too, strains to track down eyes that it can trust. Isn't that all we want to be as parents--all we want to have in our own parents? Eyes that can be trusted? I'm not telling them anything about my health, so all they'd know is that I didn't make it--that something else was more important.

Could I just borrow somebody else's liver for the week? I don't drink--I'll eat well. I'll read it poetry--and none of that sentimental stuff, either.