Our wonderful family physician of nine years, Dr. Kym R., moved WAY out of state about two years ago. She’s not a major email person, but she did include her new email on a Christmas letter.
Some two months later, I eventually emailed her and she replied. My email was a fairly fun piece of writing, so I am posting it here – along with her sweet response.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Dr. Kym,
I finally carved out some time to scroll through my overflowing inbox and realized I had never written to you. Sorry. Life got busy. Know what I mean? I have learned a few things lately and since I know you love to learn, too (ha!), I will share them with you now.
1. If your firstborn attends college on the other side of the country, you will spend entirely too much time crying. Punt that obeying God stuff and force your children to attend college within a five-hour drive.
2. Never remodel anything in a house over 90 years old. Especially bathrooms. Just let ’em leak. You’ll save thousands and your blood pressure will stay down.
3. If you DO get the insane idea to remodel something, do not for any reason hire a friend from church to do the work.
4. If you are foolish enough to hire a friend from church, make sure in advance that he really knows how to do the kind of job you are wanting done.
5. Get all estimates in writing, and if your remodeler works on a cash only basis with no receipts or paperwork retained, double your Bumetanide dose, take 2 Alleve and call me in seven weeks – when the job might be done.
6. When adopting a child, pre-order not only the gender and health status of your precious baby, but also his/her personality and gifts/abilities. Unless you and your husband are both filthy rich (read: physicians – ha!), do not request a child with a strong predisposition toward gymnastics, as it is the most expensive sport imaginable. Baseball would be a much simpler choice.
7. Perimenopausal women should be outlawed. They are way too emotional and irritable to live among the general population, and in particular, no otherwise stable family should have to put up with one. These pathetic creatures should be sent AWAY from humanity for several years and only allowed to return if and when they can carry on a converstaion without biting off any heads and remember why they have entered any given room.
8. God must have been laughing when he set things up so that children would leave for college, parents would get old, arches would fall, stomachs would sag, bladders would leak, TRI-focals would be indicated, and husbands would have “mid-life crises,” ALL AT THE SAME TIME. However, with sufficient hearing loss, one can at least occasionally disappear into one’s own world and ignore it all.
9. Do not space your children more than three years apart. Nuff said.
10. Just because you created backup files of everything under the sun before your computer was reformatted does NOT mean you will be able to recover any of the backed-up information. Always check your backups to make sure they are not corrupted before you have to use them for a restore.
11. If your superlative in every way family doctor has the audacity to move out of state, and if you are fortunate enough to locate a passable (male) replacement for 2/6 of your family, a different but outstanding (male) replacement for 3/6 of your family, and yet another quite trainable (female) replacement for yourself, do not get too excited. All the work of locating these fine physicians, dealing with two different (one bad, one horrid) insurance companies, and arranging and attending five different (can’t be back to back) get-established appointments will go down the (at least it’s not leaking since the remodel) toilet – when the passable male moves out of the area and the outstanding male transfers to an Urgent Care, both in less than nine months after you get established with them. The moral of the story: If your doctor is adamant about moving, consider following him/her or using frequent flyer miles to maintain your preferred patient status. Failing that, you will be forced to pick a doctor out of the phone book and set up five more get-established appointments (over a period of two months) with some guy you’ve never met and don’t even know if you’ll like.
There you have it; the wisdom of the ages!
Love,
Patty
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You really can’t imagine nor will you ever know, how very much I miss you. You know I have office hours every Thursday afternoon and with the new Branson airport going in anything is possible…
love always,
kym