The kupat cholim clinic near my house has kind of become my second home. Not the home-sweet-home type, but the “I’m comfortable enough here to tantrum that I didn’t get the  insurance authorization I needed” kind of home.

The nurses and secretaries all know me and they’re always very nice, asking how my baby is doing, doing their best to squeeze blood out of her tiny veins so we don’t have to schlep to a clinic farther from home, and trying to argue with the powers that be that we actually do need the authorization we asked for.

Still, I don’t usually get asked to sit down and have a coffee. Till this morning.

I ran in on my way to work, with a sample of my daughter’s secretions that I needed cultured, because, surprise, surprise, she was sick again.

“What happened?” Yocheved the nurse asked.

“She had secretions in one of her lungs,” I started, “and then fever…”

“And desaturations?” Yocheved continued.

“And six liters of oxygen,” I finished.

Yocheved sighed, commiserating.

“Can I make you a coffee?” Adina, the other nurse there, asked, looking up from the culture she was labeling.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m running to work.”

“Just for two minutes,” she said. “Sit down and have a coffee.”

“No, thanks,” I said again. “I’m going to buy something.”

“You do that,” said Yocheved. “Go buy an iced coffee and enjoy every drop.”

I smiled. That was the plan. Even Adina couldn’t argue that her hot cup of instant coffee could hold a candle to an iced one from Sam’s.

I thanked Adina and Yocheved and left, hurrying to get my coffee before going to work.

That was the third coffee I’ve been offered by a care provider or paraprofessional in a week, I mused.

The first had been last week, at the end of Aviva’s physical therapy session. Her PT sessions can be hard to watch. Her incredibly dedicated therapist can get really excited over infinitesimal progress, while I sit there thinking, Am I supposed to be excited over that?, simultaneously trying to at least pretend to share in her excitement.

Still, this session had gone relatively well — till the end, at least, when the mother of the child after me asked me if I had tried using a salt pillow to help Aviva’s breathing, and the therapist asked me if I had ever seen a certain acupuncturist. At that point I kind of exploded.

I told them both that we had tried everything (yes to the salt pillow, no to that acupuncturist, but yes to two years of another one) and that they were welcome to ask any of her doctors and hear firsthand that she was just a very complicated kid.

My not-so-subtle message — that I did not want to hear any more — got through. Everyone backed off. I gathered up Aviva and her paraphernalia (monitor, oxygen, suction machine, and the diaper bag that didn’t have enough room for diapers, since it was loaded with the ambu and spare trach), and prepared to leave.

“Can I make you a coffee?” the therapist asked.

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 603)