Let me say right up front - our pediatrician is a saint.

After a week of having Cyborg Kid home from school with some unidentified bug or system virus, we shipped her off to preschool on Friday and thought the whole thing was pretty much over. But then, last night, just as we were settling into "Gosford Park" on DVD, she woke up and began to complain of ear pain. We gave it a little "wait and watch" to make sure that the pain was real - and it was - and getting worse. So it's 9:30 Saturday night - I had vision of holding a crying, screaming, earachy child for hours in the local emergency room while we waited to see a doctor amidst the gun shot wounds and car accident victims.

We put in a call to our pediatrician's answering service and within 5 minutes we received a call back from the Doc. He suggested we bring the little cyborg over to his house! When we arrived, the dining room table was full of dinner guests finishing their meal. Everyone was cheerful and friendly, as if to say this kind of thing goes on all the time. Doc greeted us at the door as if we were coming over for a visit with the family. He was friendly, happy to see us, and never let on, for even a second, that this might be extremely inconvenient. He chatted us up while he looked at the patient, subscribed drugs, and called them into the pharmacy. I think if Cyborg Kid, hadn't been crying in pain we might have visited for a little while longer...

While he was examining the patient, I voiced my fears of having to go to the emergency room for an earache and his response was "We would never let that happen in our practice."