Well, Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse Me!

We recently met Ms. #1 Meany Pants. This was Aubrey's name for the female security guard working at the Children's Nutritional Research Center downtown. This is how we met her:

Apparently, it is extremely difficult to get timely medical assistance for my son. it seems like everything I take poor Andrew in for, needs to be done again. One time, he broke his collarbone. We had it x-rayed. It needed to be done again. We went downtown, downtown! to get another test done for Andrew, a sweat test, and it had to be redone as well! And so on the test redo day was the day we met Ms. #1 Meany Pants.

Poor Andrew has been poked and prodded and checked inside and out to determine why, oh, why, he is such a tiny little munchkin. Now, months after the fact, I can tell you, it's just lack of calories. More on that later, but suffice it to say, I didn't know this at the time. And the first sweat test we did was inconclusive because whoever did it didn't collect enough sweat to test. So, the second go-round, there was no way in heck I was going all the way downtown to wait at the doctor and have Andrew take this test again only to get the same non-results. So, I went downtown, with kids in tow, with one goal in mind: to make Andrew sweat like never before. He was going to sweat buckets, if necessary, so we could get conclusive results and rule yet another thing out in our quest to diagnose little Anders.

So, the test goes like this: They wrap some cuffs attached to electrodes around his arms and make his arms really hot. (It doesn't hurt.) Then they wrap his arms in plasticky stuff so that his arm sweats. Then, after 30 minutes with the plastic on, they swab his arms and the plasticky stuff with gauze and then test the gauze for the amount of salt, which, if there is an overabundance, they diagnose him with Cystic Fibrosis. I thought this test was ridiculous to do on Andrew in the first place because he has very few, if any, signs of CF at all. But, I'm all for ruling things out. So, we went. We got the electrode arms bands. Then they wrapped him in plastic and said, "see you in thirty minutes." This was when we was supposed to sweat. And by golly, I was going to see to it that he did.

So, we went for a power walk up and down the long hallway that crosses over the street from one wing of the hospital to the next. Then, when I thought we'd had enough there, we went outside. We started running back and forth, back and forth, on the sidewalk in front of the hospital. Then, I noticed next door to the Children's Hospital, was a building with steps in front of it. So, I marched us all right over and started doing some stair-stepping in the Texas summer sunshine. If this wouldn't make him sweat, I was going to give up. So, up and down and up and down we went, with me holding Andrew's hand as I gave him a little mini workout. The whole time, Andrew is laughing and running around like this is the best game we ever played.

At which point, #1 Ms. Meany Pants comes storming out of the building and over to the steps where Andrew and I are laughing as we run across and cops one heck of an attitude and says, (imagine this in eubonics, because that's what it was), "what are you doin'? what are you doin'? You been here for ten minutes, runnin' up and down in here and I don't know what you're doin', but you need to go. This one (gesturing to Andrew) is a little bit tipsy and we can' have that over here! You need to stop it now!" This grouchy lady was mad!

I was a little taken aback by this large lady security guard, who seemed to be a little bit puffed up with her overinflated sense of authority. I thought surely she would see the wraps on Andrew's arms, and see we were from the hospital and that our running was completely innocent. I don't know what she thought we were doing, but I knew if she would let me explain, she wouldn't be mad. So I began with the intention of explaining. I said, "Sorry, ma'am, we were just--" at which point she felt she needed to reprimand even more, and cut me off to do so. "That is enough. That is enough! You need to leave the property right! now!"

She kicked us out!

I was a little bit offended.

We meant no harm whatsoever. There was nothing dangerous about what we were doing. She didn't need to yell at us in that way. She could have asked us what we were doing with the intention of listening to the answer. There was no need for her to kick us off the front steps of the building. I thought it was ridiculous and besides making us all completely bewildered at her unprompted angry response, (as well as making the kids pretty much terrified of her) it was completely unnecessary. I totally don't mind leaving, but demanding we leave and treating me, an adult, like I was a child, really rubbed me the wrong way. Just calmly, politely ask me to leave, don't treat me like a felon, don't cause us to feel unnecessarily ashamed of ourselves when we didn't do anything wrong, and don't kick us off your property, lady. It was seriously rude.

I guess the good news was that when we walked back into the building, slightly bewildered, we had done enough before almost getting the cops called on us, to make Andrew sweat quite a bit on his little arms. We found out later, it was enough sweat and that the test came back negative, so he didn't have CF, which was a relief, even though we didn't feel like he probably had it in the first place. And I am glad. Because I do not want to go back to the hospital and I certainly don't want to run into #1 Ms. Meany Pants. ever. again.