Caught the kid up on shots last week. Four at once. She's a trooper. Pediatrician hears a heart murmur. Time to go to Children's. Still's Murmur. Things they don't tell you: between 30 and 70% of kids will have a heart murmur at some point in their lives. So yay. No worrying about heart murmurs.

Insurance will pay for allergy testing after the fourth birthday but not after the fifth. Describe symptoms to pediatrician. She prescribes an Epipen on the spot. We hold off until we can meet with the allergist. Allergist is a grim-ass place. They torture my daughter and then come back in fifteen minutes later and without any preamble decide we need to know how to use an epipen right fucking now. And they've got coupons! Yaaaaay!

She had a cold this weekend. Kinda wheezy. She had a birthday party, too, in a brand-fucking-new house. She spends plenty of time in a brand-fucking-new birth center but I guess our contractors didn't, like, glue everything together or something because she had her first legit attack. Had to go home, get her inhaler and come back. First time that's happened. And there was every single parent, judging me. And it's like - this cough she has? She got it from your kids. And the reaction? I've got milk older than your house; this isn't usually a problem. And the last episode she had? That was you feeding her a peanut butter granola bar, not me; sorry she threw up in your car but it's not like we've made a secret out of this.

So now our kid has gone from "might be allergic" to "bubble girl" and everybody loves to bring up this AMAZING! NEW! RESEARCH! to say "oh and by the way, you're a bad fucking parent because you didn't start experimental immunotherapy on your nine month old daughter" without understanding that you can tell a healthcare provider that peanuts give your 6-month-old shortness-of-breath and hives? but what they're going to tell you is that immune systems are immature, she'll probably grow out of it, and only a monster would test their children this early, they won't do it and besides insurance won't cover it anyway you horrible parent you.

So. You can tell all these "concerned parents" that the study they saw on the Today show was thirty fucking seven children, that it was across the fucking country, and that the study didn't even start until your daughter was two but what kind of dick do you have to be to drag them through all that because they're just trying to help! And you can tell all these "concerned parents" that your wife the doctor is actually about to invest multiple thousands of dollars in order to provide oral immunotherapy for her patients and they'll stop you and say

"...but you're not thinking of EXPERIMENTING on YOUR OWN DAUGHTER, are you?"

And then you want to jab them with an EpiPen? But you're not going to do that because the fuckers are like $300 and besides, you haven't even filled the fucking prescription yet you monster and it's been two weeks call CPS NOW!

Hell is other people's parents.