Penultimate Pediatrician
We had our penultimate wellness visit with the pediatrician. Our doctor will see patients until they leave college, which means next year will be the final time we go to her office.
We secured her as their doctor while they were still in utero, and she saw them when they came home from the hospital in tandem with their neonatologist. She has known them their whole lives, through every stage, every milestone, every vaccine, every ear infection.
It would be easier to go to a GP at this point. The pediatrician’s practice is out-of-network, which creates extra steps for simple things. But I’m finding it hard to say goodbye to someone who has known them their whole lives, and the kids are not eager to start over with someone new.
But very soon, they will need to start going to someone who doesn’t know them at all. It’s such a small relationship; a person we only see once a year at this point. But somehow it feels much bigger than 0.27% of our year.
2 comments
I’m not unsympathetic. Change is hard. It’s inconvenient. It marks an end, as well as a beginning. I’ve just never understood the whole “paediatrician till you’re an adult” thing that seems to happen in your system. I think I learned about it on Friends! lol Once I left home at 17 (and even before then), I would never have wanted to go to my childhood doctor/GP!
I got REALLY mad at the pediatrician’s office last time I went. So when my daughter came home from school and wanted to get a flu shot, I told her I would never be dealing with them again, so she could call them herself. I never really liked that doctor anyway. My husband and daughter did, though, so we stuck with her.