I have a friend who has a child, and their child is always sick. Always crying. Just generally, not a very happy wee lamb. Every other day she’ll come to me, complaining how awful it is to have a Difficult Child. And at first I made all the right sympathetic noises, I consoled her, I asked how I could help.
And then her kid gets allergy testing done, and several allergies are confirmed, and I think great! This is likely why they are always upset and ill! Maybe now they can get better!
And my friend… does not stop exposing them to the allergies.
“But they’re allergic to wheat,” I say, “and milk, and you’re still giving them those things.”
“Oh but they’re only minor allergies, not like, anything dangerous.”
“But that’s not… that’s not how that works,” I say, trying to be helpful, as I explain that even low level inflammation can be extremely detrimental in the long term, and extremely painful to deal with and how exposure therapy doesn’t always work. So of course he’s always sick and always crying. Of course he is.
And she rolls her eyes and says, “Look, I know you think you know a lot about health. But you’re not a parent, so I can’t expect you to understand.”
Because apparently upon the benediction of motherhood, the sacred knowledge of the universe is imparted to you the moment the umbilical cord is cut. Because apparently someone who is sick all the time, wouldn’t be able to understand. Except of course I don’t understand her. I understand her child. And what it’s like to be ignored, and hurt, and abused. And sick.
And suddenly you realize, maybe your friend is not your friend in the way you thought they were. And maybe, likely, probably, they shouldn’t be a parent.
Oh my God. How the hell does anyone do this? Your kid is always sick, you find out they have allergies… you don’t immediately cut that food out of their diet?
Omg if I knew anyone like that I’d smack the shit out of them. As someone who’s had crohn’s disease for almost twenty years, I can personally attest to the fact that the body can be very sensitive to “minor” things, and that inflammation–no matter how localized it may be–WREAKS HAVOC on the ENTIRE body.
When I was a very small child, my mom used to bury coins in my sandbox, leave huge boot prints in the sand, and tell me pirates had come in the night and buried treasure. I would be out there happily for hours, with my little sieve, and my mom got a quiet morning to herself for the price of a handful of pennies.
I was always kind of skeptical about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, because visiting every kid in the world did not seem reasonable. But the pirates only visited me, so they were probably real.
So that’s the story of how I ended up being an archaeologist. How about you?
Wide Spread Interests 