Dad Day @ Doctor Office

So, I had a typical "Dad Day" yesterday. My little girl Ronnie had a small hernia. The Pediatrician referred us to the Pediatric Surgeon for evaluation. Some might be interested to hear what I see and feel in a typical "Dad" day. We loaded the twins into the car and headed to downtown Atlanta. Found the doctor (easier said than done in Atlanta!) and waited for a while. I picked up two issues of WebMD Magazine--a publication designed for medical waiting rooms. I love the WebMD site and use it often. I thought the magazine would be pretty good. I was disappointed. I looked at two issues. One only had ONE page on fitness--and this was finger exercises for arthritis! The other only had a couple of pages on fitness tips. The rest was clinical stuff and a whole lot of advertisements for prescription drugs. How ironic! Consider that most of the drug needs in this country would be cured or prevented by healthy eating and exercise! You would think with this in mind there would be more on exercise--but NO! One page! Give me a break! On a more positive note, the doctor walked in and was not fat and even athletic. We chatted about sports for a minute. He examined Ronnie's small hernia and basically said her body should be able to heal itself and that surgery was not recommended by him even though many other doctors would do surgery. What a breath of fresh air! My God! A healthy doctor that didn't recommend surgery--what a concept! We are thankful. The biggest worry to me with Ronnie was not even the hernia itself, but the dangers of bacterial infections with surgical procedures these days. That is worse than the hernia! So, we headed for lunch then took them to one of Atlanta's MANY wonderful park playgrounds. Stay tuned because I'm going to start writing more about community health and Atlanta as an example of how to do parks and recreation the right way. In A-Town, Coach RJ