I know there is an historic election going on.  And I have voted, that is I have authorised my mother to forge my signature on a postal vote.  And I do care who wins.  But I also believe that the US will survive either way, because we have a constitution that has sustained probably the most liberal (in the old fashioned sense of the word) society in the history of the world, and I think it will keep on doing its job.

Only right now instead of feeling historic I am feeling anxious about my daughter, who is working for the VSO (the British equivalent of the American Peace Corps) in Southwestern Uganda, right on the border of the DRC and Rwanda.  She keeps telling me she is okay, and I know there is no fighting where she is, but there are constant reports in the middle of the night on the World Service about conflicts and mass movements in that area.  

In her world it probably means nothing more than a refugee camp opening up.  But if it opens up I am afraid she will go in to assess the children there, and then I am afraid she will catch something.

This kind of fear for your children has nothing to do with right or wrong or what you have raised them to do.  My daughter has been in Uganda for more than a year because there are people there who need her help.  I am proud of her for that, but I am also counting the weeks (not so many now) until she is home again.  And hoping this new conflict doesn’t mean she puts herself at risk before she comes safely back to me.

I’ve been pretty lucky with my children (touch wood, because I am also superstitious), but this kind of anxiety inevitably reminds me of old anxieties.  You never stop worrying about your kids.  When the Uganda daughter was about 3, and was meant to be taking a nap, instead she got into the flouride tablets that I (wrongly) was giving her to compensate for what wasn’t being added to our water.

I found her with the pills everywhere around her, a few smeared on her mouth.  I had no idea how toxic an overdose might be.  I took her to the emergency room and not long afterwards her father arrived to join me.

The medics all seemed, as I suspected, completely casual about the potential flouride overdose, but a doctor came in and examined her and lingered in a way that surprised me.

When she left I said to my husband, do you think that doctor seemed unusually interested in listening to her heart?

He assured me I was imagining things and we waited.  Nurses brought ipecac and the poor child vomited what turned out to be 3 flouride tablets.  Still we weren’t discharged.

After a while the doctor came back and looked very sober and said,  “Has anyone mentioned that your daughter has a heart murmur?”

I noted, without any satisfaction, that my mother’s instinct wasn’t wrong. The doctor said they weren’t worried at all about the flouride, but they needed to x ray my daughter’s heart. Suddenly we were there for an entirely different reason.  

We waited another hour or two and then the x rays were available.  My husband, who had quit smoking, took it up again in the mean time.  

Finally the doctor said the x rays showed her heart was not enlarged.  That meant there was no immediate danger.  She would be put on a waiting list to see a heart specialist.

We waited three months.  Further tests revealed that the heart murmur was “harmless” and that was the end of that drama.

I’m waiting again now.

Meanwhile the rest of you guys are probably thinking about trivial stuff like who might be the next President of the United States.