Yakkity yak

An irate teenager handed me the phone yesterday to talk to her grandfather about the condition of her foot. Apparently she had stitches in it a month ago after stepping on something sharp, and now, weeks later and stitches closed, her foot was painful and swollen. I took her word for it on the pain, and I looked at her feet and confirmed the swelling. On the phone, the grandfather yakked at me about the fact that he was not going to come pick her up because if she came home, her foot would still be swollen, and better for it to be swollen at school. Because, you know, if she came home, she would just eat and get "even fatter." [This girl was significantly taller than my own 5' 7", and while perhaps slightly overweight, she was by no means obese.] Not in the mood to deal with this kind of guardian, I said "I understand" and tried to get off the phone. Instead, he very suddenly took the offensive route: "How do you know it's swollen? Her feet are so big and she's such a big girl, how can you even tell such a thing?" 


Being that it's halfway into my second semester of this, and long ago vowed to not let such talk get to me - or at least would not let it appear on the surface that it had, because it's hard not to let it get to me just a little bit, later - I had the guts to snap back at him: "I'm the nurse. I assessed her." 


That shut him up, at least, and he asked to talk to his granddaughter again.