Take the time to thank your Doctor on National Dr's Day!

March 30th falls on a Sunday this year, but that's no reason we can't take the time to say thanks to our doctors. National Doctor Day has been around since 1933 and marks the first use of general anesthesia. If that's not something to be thankful for, I don't know what is! Whoever came up with the idea of pain meds has my hurrah. My personal experience with this would be limited to whatever they give you when you have teeth pulled and the wonderful epidural I received when giving birth, but that's plenty of exposure for me to be thankful!

The first National Doctor's Day was actually celebrated in 1991, although it was 1958 when the House of Representatives adopted a resolution for Doctor's Day. It became "National" in 1990 - after only 32 years! President George Bush signed a resolution to make March 30th the official "National Doctor's Day."

You know, I think doctors get a bad wrap a lot of time. We expect them to have all the answers and be fail-proof. Don't get me wrong, they get paid the big bucks to do their jobs, but family physicians typically aren't specialists in any one specific field, and there's a heck of a lot of parts to the human body that can come down with problems. And, of course as our family just found out, sometimes a virus is just a virus and has to run its course, and you may never know exactly what it was all about.

Just two weeks ago, our 14-month-old son came down with an extremely high fever. We'd always been told that 104 was seriously high and a trip to the hospital was probably going to follow. When I got him up from a nap and felt how hot he was and the temperature came out as 104.7, I freaked. Well, that's putting it mildly. I had enough sense to call the doctor on call and God bless him, he called back immediately. He advised giving him Tylenol and a bath to bring down the fever, and said that if it didn't come down to call back. Fortunately, it did come down, but for the next few days, we fought the fever as it yo-yo-ed up and down, the highest coming to 105.4. We battled it with a rotation of Motrim and Tylenol every three hours, luke-warm baths, and just plain stripping him down to just his diaper.

We saw the doctor three times and ran a battery of tests - no strep, no flu, no mono, no sinus infection, we even ran a chest x-ray just to be safe. Nothing there. So that brought us back to the awful and unknown "virus." Well, after 3 days, his fever started coming down and stayed down without medicine, and we all started sleeping better.

In the meantime though, our doctor (and the other doctors in the practice) were a great comfort and support. Fortunately, we didn't end up at the hospital like a friend of ours whose son went through a similar ordeal - only at 25 days old. They were released from the hospital after several days, their son better, but still no explanation for what caused the fever. The point is, the doctors were reassuring and equally important, available. I understand that not everyone has such great doctors, but hey, if they don't suit your family, CHANGE doctors!

Hopefully, we won't be back to the doctor's office for anything nearly as upsetting anytime soon, but if something does come up, I know we have some great doctors to help us out. We actually have to go back in a month for his 15-month check-up, and even though it will be late, I might just have our son "make" a thank-you card for him.

However you can, email, mail, or if you have a visit coming up soon and can do so personally, take the time to let your doctor know you appreciate what they do. I still feel a little bad for never sending a thank-you note to all the nurses who helped out while I was in the hospital for labor and delivery. They made the experience as absolutely wonderful as possible. Maybe it's not to late...

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Take the time to thank your Doctor on National Dr's Day!

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