"Is everyone in your family sick?"

I was in Rite Aid today, picking up prescriptions for me and all three kids. As I rattled off our names and the names of the meds, something which took a good several minutes, the lady standing next to me laughed and asked if everyone in my family was sick.

I was so *angry. I could not believe the blithe and sparkling insensitivity of her remark. I turned to her, then looked away, because it took me a minute to convince myself I was right to be angry. I turned back to her, hand on my hip and said "Well, let's see..." I watched her smile fade and her face pale a small bit as I rattled off the litany of diagnoses. "...I have two who are autistic, at least two with asthma, one is ADHD, one is bipolar and just got out of a hospital. I had cancer this year and had a hysterectomy, my husband had Hodgkin's some time back, and my daughter has Pseudo Tumor Cerebri. Anything else?"

To her credit, she had the good taste not to appear angry when she stammered and said she was sorry. I held her eye a moment longer, then dismissed her. I thought, god, what if there had been something really catastrophic in our lives? Something like leukemia or AIDS?

For a minute I felt very small, and wondered if there were anything really wrong with any of us at all, you know? If I had somehow imagined all the sickness and symptoms.

And on the heels of that, I got so *angry at the people who keep saying that. People who should be smart enough to know that even if I were doing something to make the kids sick I could NOT convince doctors to write prescriptions for mental and biochemical disorders. You might be able to deliberately induce a medical illness, but you could not fake a biochemical one. I can't fake cancer in a pap smear. I can't fake cerebral spinal fluid in a needle. I can't fake genetic testing. I can't fake lab reports sent from the laboratory straight to the doctor's office. And with so much going on in our family, with the genetics going back generations, am I to blame for the genetic disorders of the generations before me as well?

Then I was angry with myself for letting it get to me, for allowing myself to wallow in self pity when, after all, in handing me the bags of potions and pills the pharmacist was sending my kids home. They weren't hooked up to machines or tubes. They weren't in a hospital waiting to die. I wasn't a parent who was having to come to terms with the loss of a child, or even, this afternoon, having to leave one behind in a hospital. I'm just one trying to find a way to manage the illnesses of one (or two or three).

If I had a choice, if it were up to me and I were able to pull the strings the way it's said I have been, I would make my children happy and healthy and safe. I understand what Munchausen's is, that some parents make their children sick to get attention, but in my experience you don't get respect or kudos for having sickness in your family. Not at my financial level, anyway. Time, attention and sympathy from doctors comes at a price I can't afford. The doctors we see aren't sympathetic. They're suspicious, bored, impatient and disinterested. They shuffle you in and out as quickly and impersonally as possible. They don't want to know your name, they don't want to hold your hand and no one says 'poor baby' to you. In, out, write the scrip, go home and don't forget your co-pay.

I don't feel special because my kids have some difficulties. I feel guilt and shame that I passed it all on to them.

People can say what they want about me and my family. but for better or worse, whatever the strengths or weaknesses of each child, I love them fiercely. Things some of you look at now as failings in them are really their greatest strengths and that will become more and more true as they get older.

So I don't bother paying much attention to those people who are so delightedly cruel with regard to the problems of my children. More often than not, I try to ignore it except in those odd moments when some insensitive twit at a pharmacy counter asks me what the deal with all the meds is and I'm already feeling guilty.