When Two “Wrongs” Make Right
Okay, maybe not two wrongs, but while Organic Freedoms and Smart Freedoms are a challenged couple when it comes to cleaning house, when its comes to crisis? They are a formidable team. In You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up! the couples’ personality types compliment each other when dealing with their son’s illness.
Annabelle, a typical Smart Freedom, is constantly gathering information about her son’s condition, making sure that she knows all of the facts and possible scenarios. So when she discovered that there was a rare complication to children with her son’s condition, she was convinced that he had this complication.
Jeff is sure that his son does not have this complication because he’s an optimist at heart (the general temperament of an Organic Freedom is idealistic). But just like my husband insisted that I meet ALL the back up doctors for our midwife, Annabelle insists that her son have an MRI to rule out this condition. And God bless the logical intuitive Smart Freedoms who leave NO stone unturned in their search for THE BEST because Annabelle is proven right. The defect would have rendered him paralyzed if it had not been treated.
“It was a complicated and scary three-and-a-half-hour surgery, but Ezra made it through with flying colors and got his cutest scar to boot. Annabelle’s inquiries and insistence on the MRI had saved him and our family an immeasurable amount of pain and unhappiness. I am eternally grateful to her for being a huge pain in the ass and for making damn sure she got her way when it came to Ezra’ spine.”
I also am grateful for my Smart Freedom pain in the ass husband who made me meet all the back up doctors for our midwife, because one of those back-up doctors remembered ME (since apparently no one in our midwife practice had ever insisted upon meeting the back-up doctors!) and treated me with compassion when my epidural wasn’t working, the nurse was being a rhymes with witch, and I had to have an emergency c-section. The back-up doctor is now THE doctor.
[While Katie’s experience with the midwives is different, when dealing with an OB practice, usually everyone wants to meet and DOES meet the back-up doctors. Detail oriented Funs and Classics are always aghast that I didn’t meet them. Fred wanted to meet the back-up doctors but I didn’t feel like dealing with it and having yet another doctor’s appointment and To-Do on my list b/c I really didn’t care who my doctor was unless they were incompetent — I’d mention here thank God because you ended up having a c-section and not using your midwife for the delivery — I studied everyone’s experiences that I knew and women always seem to want to control child birth and frankly, it seemed like a crap shoot to me … those that had great births were convinced it was due to their control and those that had crappy births looked back and wanted to do things differently … ]