The Incredible Vanishing Symptoms (and Co-pays)

Here’s an interesting post from The World According to Megan, a pediatrician’s blog. In it, Megan writes about how frustrating it is for parents when their kids’ symptoms seem to magically disappear when they get to the doctor’s office:

The worst part of those interactions is when the parents look at you after you go through every body system, affirming normalcy, and they ask, “Are you sure? Can’t you find something wrong? You mean, I wasted my co-pay on this?”

I can understand where she’s coming from. After all, the health of the child is infinitely more important than the money. Speaking as a parent who has used many cell phone minutes talking to the on-call nurse or doctor about various rashes, coughs and fevers, though, I can also understand where the parents are coming from too. It’s not that we want our babies to be sick so that our co-pay won’t be wasted, it’s that, on top of spending the money, we still don’t know what was causing our babies’ coughs/rashes/fevers, and we have a sneaking fear that, once we leave the doctor’s office, the symptoms will return.