Crazy night after a hell of a long week

Just a warning, this may be long. I am still so pissed off about how this rude doctor treated us.
Most of this was written between 1 and 3 AM so obviously somethings have changed :)



So we have been home for about an hour or so, Robbie is soundly sleeping and mommy is still stressing out and fuming about how freaking stupid the doctor that he saw was!


Ok, so after getting to the ER we didn’t have to wait an extremely long amount of time, thankfully! Although in the end I did get what I thought was the right treatment for my son the whole visit to the emergency department sucked!!!

When we (RL, me and my 23-year-old brother) walked into the ER we had to go to a window to explain what had brought us in tonight. The triage nurse was so rude that when she asked me why we were there, she didn’t even turn on the microphone to be able to hear my explanation. So here we are in a waiting room full of people and I am trying to yell to her my sons complete name and birthdate and why we were there. She then shoves a piece of paper at me and tells me to go to the ED registration window.

So I send Kevin, and Robbie to go sit down while I take care of the paperwork. This next girl, was just as rude as the triage nurse was. She snaps questions about whether RL has been there before and address and on and on. Finally I just got p!ssed at her and said, "Look he was here on Monday for surgery, NOTHING has changed! His surgeon has requested that I bring him in because he is dehydrated." She then looks at me and says, "It’s kind of busy tonight, I don't know when he will be seen" GRRRRR! (Two min later we see her walking out the exit, guess it was the end of her shift and she didn't want to be bothered by a sick kid and his mom!)

I go to join my brother and RL in a section of the waiting room and there was this poor little 10 month old that was all stuffy and having a hard time breathing, I think to myself, great now my son not only has to recover from his surgery but he will probably now end up with whatever this little girl has, WONDERFUL! I know I know, not the baby’s moms fault but still, RL is having a hard enough time recovering as it is.

We finally are called back by the triage nurse, they do all the normal stuff, vitals, weight, blah blah blah. After all that poking and prodding we finally get put into a room to wait 20 more minutes before the nurse comes into see us. Ok, no biggie I knew it was going to take some time for the DR to come back and see us so my brother and I were just talking and in walks the doctor and the questions from her begin.

I give her a short history of what has been going on this week, all this time she is just looking at me with a blank look like she isn’t even listening. So here comes more poking and prodding on poor RL. She does the normal looking in the ears, feeling of the throat, etc. HELLO!! This kid just had ear tubes put in and a T & A, come on why would you push on his neck or shove an oto-scope into his ear?!?!?!?! RL let her look in the first ear but knowing what was coming with the second one he fought it, the Dr decided to snap at me for not holding him perfectly still, her exact words were “If you aren’t able to hold him I can get a nurse in here so that he won’t be able to move” “no thanks, I think I can hold my own sick kid!” Knowing how much pain he must be in, it was just hurting my brother and I to watch it all. Then comes the part where she wants to check how his throat is doing (BTW it takes both me and my brother to hold him down for this one!). Ok, so all the physical crap is over and then starts the questions. Again she is looking at me like I have three boobs or something lol, just totally looking through me and not paying attention to what I am saying.
Dr: Have you been giving him Tylenol and Motrin?
Me: Of course, he gets it every 4 and 6 hours since we have been released from the hospital
Dr: Have you offered him anything to drink today?
Me: (feel like slapping her!) Of course!! I have been pushing fluids and soft foods at this kid all day. (Sarcastically, wanting to say to her but don’t: NO, not at all, I like to starve and dehydrate my child so that we can end up in the ER. I just don’t have anything better to do on a Sunday evening, GRRRRR!!!
Dr: Have you tried to give him water?
Me: UMMMMM, I told you yes! Water, juice, Propel, Gatorade, heck even soda, anything just to get the kid to DRINK!
Dr: Have you tried to get him to eat?
Me: Once again, YES!! Jell-O, popsicles, pudding. Bananas seem to be a big hit but he won’t even touch those right now.
Dr: Ok well I don’t really see anything wrong with him, he looks hydrated (because the kiddo is drooling, but get real who wants to swallow when your throat hurts right?)
Me: Ok well that’s great but his surgeon has requested that you call him, before discharging my son so that he can be in on what the treatment is going to be.
Ok so at this point I suppose she has all the information that she needs and as she is walking out the door she looks at me and says
Dr: you know, placing an IV in a 21 month old is very traumatic, are you sure that Dr. Downs said to call him?
Me: OF COURSE HE WANTS YOU TO CALL HIM!!!!!!
At this point she just walks off.

So, I ripped her a new one when she came back into the room. Told her that she shouldn’t just assume that I am some idiot making up symptoms for my son so that I can score some pain meds. That she really needs to rethink the tone that she uses when she is talking to patients and their parents, I understand that she is busy but honestly, that is none of my concern, only my son is. My son is miserable and I just want him to be able to recover from this surgery without having to be readmitted to the hospital because he isn’t eating or drinking. I told her that she really need to treat parents as mature people that actually know what’s going on with their kid and to not treat them like some little 15 year old that doesn’t know what the heck they are doing.

We were released around 11 after they gave him some Tylenol with codeine. I start reading the discharge papers as Kevin is putting RL in his car seat and realize that they didn’t write him a prescription for the Tylenol to take at home. I call the nurse from the parking lot and he says to me “there wasn’t supposed to be a take home prescription, just the 2.5ml that he received in the ER”. UMM NO that would be great if I didn’t want him to have pain relief for the next couple of day, only for a couple hours that night. I told him that the doctor said that he would be sent home with a script and that the discharge papers say that he is supposed to have one. He says that he is going to go check with the doctor and for me to call back in about 10 min. At this point I am about to boil, my son is starting to feel loopy because of the meds, my brother is grouchy because he is tired and I am tired too, last thing I want to do is hang out around town for another hour or so while he checks with the doctor and then wait for the darn thing to be filled our town isn’t big enough to drive around for that long and I can’t quit driving because then RL will wake up and be in pain.

So I FINALLY get the script take it to Walgreens, wait another 20 minutes for them to fill it (have to drive around again because they don’t allow people to wait in the drive through lane, ok so I drive from one end of the city to the other and back. Cops were giving me weird looks the whole time because I kept passing the same one lol). Finally at around 1:30 we get home, RL eats a little and crashes out. WOOOHOOOO! Finally done with that freaking night, or so I think….

Around 3AM he wakes up and will not go back to sleep, drink and taking more Motrin or anything is out of the question. I give him some more motrin and Tylenol and try to get him to drink, no dice, pushes it away from him and looks at his cup like it is a two headed snake. So he lays back down and is really restless for about 15 min and finally falls asleep. He woke up a couple more times but didn’t really have any problem getting back to sleep. He took a couple of drinks through out the early morning hours and he ended up sleeping until about 9 this morning. He was so thirsty, YAY!!!! No more thinking that the cup is a two headed snake, he sucks down about 15 ounces in 5 minutes, YAY again!! He was kind of groggy when he got up but right away wanted a banana so he had that and drank some more propel.

He has been playing cheerfully this morning even wanting to go outside and play! He actually ate some scrambled eggs that I made for breakfast and a cereal bar. He is doing really well so far, just have to make sure that I keep on his medicine schedule and that he keeps drinking.
Wish us luck, we go to see his ENT on Wednesday and hopefully we will hear good news. Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers! They worked!!!!!!!