Toddling Around the Farmer's Market

Just back from the Berkeley Farmer's Market, where I sat in the sun, eating a very large and very delicious chocolate chip cookie (but not INSANELY delicious, so I didn't have to feel that guilty) and  listening to mellow, vaguely medieval music played by a young man with an unidentified stringed instrument.   The music seemed to float out over the crowd, perfect on a summer's day when you're relaxing with a cookie and watching the world pass by.

There were toddlers all over the place: a grubby one in camouflage sweat pants, a fashion-plate little girl with a Louis Vuitton-carrying grandmother, and many proto-typical Berkeley toddlers in mismatched clothes and sun hats. Many of them had a big cookie like mine, and some had an ice cream cone from the upscale ice cream stall.  

A toddler of my acquaintance, Rylan, an  indescribably adorable seventeen-month old, had a medical inning last week that shook up everyone who knew him.  He managed to hit two children's hospitals in two states (he got sick while vacationing) and spiked a fever of 106 degrees.  He had two seizures, which are apparently a child's way of protecting his brain from a high fever.  This was very scary. At my age, I have come to accept a near-chronic angst about people over 50 developing serious illnesses and sometimes dying, but  I am in no way ready for small people at the other end of the spectrum getting very ill.  I had a very uneasy night when I heard this news. 

Rylan has  recovered and is now back to chasing his cat, tearing up newspapers, and knocking around in the world in the way that toddlers do.  I made up a batch of the cinnamon and ginger tea my doctor recommended, which is so soothing that I am tempted to send the recipe to Rylan's mothers:

6 cups of water
2 sticks of cinnamon
1/2 cup very thinly sliced fresh ginger
2 T honey

Simmer for 1/2 an hour and strain.  Drink to calm shattered nerves.

Doctor in a Starched Pink Shirt

Most doctors these days ask questions without looking you in the eye.  They're busy typing your responses into a computer and then reading your history on the computer and then, I kid you not, the computer decides which drug to suggest.  If he agrees, the doctor then punches a button and tells another computer, maybe in Las Vegas, to send that drug to you.  End of story.

I went through this today with a gastroenterologist. He stared at the computer screen, fingering a pen.   I stared out the window behind him at the foothills of Mt. Diablo and wondered who fetched his pristine pink shirt from the cleaner's.

"You've tried ginger and cinnamon tea?" he asked, looking up from the screen.

"No," I said, bewildered.  This was startlingly low-tech.

He dropped his pen.

"No?" he said in his precise East Indian English. "Oh, my God."   His dark eyes were full of concern and empathy.  "That could clear up the entire problem."

He gave me directions:  I am  to chop up ginger and stick cinnamon, put the pieces in a pot of water, and boil it for 30 minutes.  With any luck, the tea will relax my digestive system.   In the meantime, he'd told the computer in Las Vegas to send a two-month supply of Elavil.

Then he gave me a light, encouraging touch on the back as he escorted me to the waiting room.