I was just on the phone with my mother. But you could probably tell that from the subect line.
Her latest?
Mom: "I was discussing this with your father... we think you should get a copy of all of your medical records, and we can fly you down to Florida for a second opinion."
Me: "Oooookay. Um. Mom? That's - that would cost a lot of money. And I'm not just talking about plane tickets. I'm talkin' no way would my insurance company pay for an out-of-system doctor, much less one in another state."
Mom: "Well, clearly these doctors aren't doing anything for you."
Me: "But they are. I've been having lots of tests..."
Mom: "And they haven't found the problem."
Me: "And your Florida doctor would look at the tests and not be able to find the problem, either. They're trying."
Now, the thing with my parents is that
a) they both work in quasi-medical fields, so they have just enough knowledge to be dangerous, and
b) in Mom's field, every patient is diagnosable via a single X-ray, and in Dad's, they're diagnosed long before they get to the doctors he works with.
Which leads to them thinking that if a diagnosis has not been made within, say, a week or one test, whichever comes first, the doctor isn't doing their job. They cannot conceive of something being difficult to diagnose.
But you can't tell them that. Doesn't fit their worldview.
So I continued to explain to my mother that my doctor is not ignoring me, that I'm getting more tests done, and that I cannot miss howeverlong at work (would she offer to pay my rent and gas bill, too, since I wouldn't be earning money while I was down there? I think not), and that they would not be able to afford thousands of dollars' worth of uncovered-by-insurance tests. And what doctor would they bring me to, anyway? "I don't know," she says. Well, of course not, she hasn't actually thought any of this through.
My mother is the absolute queen of grand and meaningless gestures; my mother only offers things that I can't take her up on. So this way she gets to look like a wonderful, caring mother without having to actually do anything. Gods forbid she should do any of the things that she can do to help.
