That Nathaniel, Again

Recently, Nikolina was evaluated by the spina bifida clinic at the University of California at San Francisco (USCF), where Shane and Lemony are considering transferring her care because Stanford has no way for all the specialists to see her in one day, meaning six trips instead of one, for each of her followups. The USCF clinic can pull together the team in one room on the same day. So, to SF they went in spite of the slightly longer distance.

As the various staff members and doctors came in to evaluate Nikolina and talk to Shane and Lemony, Nathaniel drew on a coloring board that had been placed in the room for children. He made little noise, so no one paid much attention to him, including Shane and Lemony. He seemed quite involved in his art work.

As they were leaving, all the appointments being finished and only the clinic coordinator staying to talk to them, Shane moved toward Nathaniel to start to gather him in, then froze for a minute. He quickly moved away from Nathaniel's location until he had finished talking to the clinic coordinator and she had left. The reason? Apparently, Nathaniel had set up a comparison chart and had been keeping score: UCSF vs Stanford in categories such as distance, time, convenience, quality of urology, quality of neurosurgery, etc., giving relative points to each. Yep, it was better that no one see what he had been doing!

Indeed, life with Nathaniel is interesting and is likely to get a lot more interesting the older he gets!