Health Concerns

Tyler's Passport Photo

So our preparations for Samoa continue. I'm excited more days than not now, but still have a lot of anxieties. For the past few weeks my biggest concerns have centered around health issues. I read a blog of a missionary who lived in Samoa and discovered the mosquito born illnesses that live there, specifically dengue fever. I realize now that I should have never read this, because its been a source of stress for me ever since.

I need to preface this next story by saying that a curse runs in my mother's family that all Franklin women are prone to an excessive amount of worry when it comes to their family's safety and physical health. My mother never questioned the moral character of my friends growing up or asked if I'd done my homework, but did make me swim in water up to my waist until I was fifteen years old. I've thought that the paranoia lessened through the generations (my grandmother being the biggest nut job, my mother and aunts - fairly nutty, and my sister, cousins, and I -fairly normal). We are all quite aware of it and can have a laugh of it occasionally.

Being the first Franklin granddaughter to have a child, I realized that the onset of this excessive paranoia actually occurs with the birth of your first child. I am embarrassed to say that Tyler has been checked for various symptoms in the Urgent Care 4 times over the past 6 weeks. I'm quite sure Tyler's chart now reads "overly anxious parent." (This wouldn't be the first time in the history of the Franklin family).

I scheduled an appointment this past week with the Pediatrician at the BYU student health center just to ask some questions about my "concerns" with having a toddler living in Samoa. I was asked multiple times "why exactly" I was there and realized the doctor offered little information to settle my anxieties other than saying Tyler is a healthy baby and should be okay. (The doctor had never even heard of some of the diseases I'd read about on the internet).

Andy made a good point afterwards though that the doctor that will know best how living in Samoa effects a toddler is a Samoan doctor. I guess I'll just have to have more faith in the health care system there and I need to stop researching diseases on the internet.