so frustrated with…so thankful for…

Here it is almost Thanksgiving and I do have SO much to be thankful for…I’ll get to that later. Right now, I need to rant about a certain doctor we’ve been seeing trying to figure out why the oldest has had fever since September. Our pediatrician has been fantastic. Her staff has been amazing and accommodating! They’ve never made me feel like I’m too worried, not worried enough, they’ve fit me in when I’ve been in helicopter mom mode. So, for them, I am thankful. That being said. We’ve been seeing an Infectious Diseases doc for over a month (almost two) now. The first appointment was great. The second, still good. Then, I did the unthinkable. I questioned someone who thinks they know EVERYTHING. On a Friday evening, this doctor had her staff call and give us the results of a CT scan saying that the boy had mastoiditis. Well, because I didn’t get any explanations of what this is, what it means, where do I turn? The internet. Sure enough, the internet says mastoiditis is an emergency that needs to be treated with i.v. medicines. So, I work myself up BIG TIME. Saturday a.m. I called the on call doctor to ask why we weren’t in the emergency room…I explained that I hadn’t talked to the doctor only her staff and I looked up the diagnosis on the internet. This very nice on call doctor explained that sometimes one with mastoiditis doesn’t need to be in the E.R. Being who I am, I called our ENT and scheduled an appointment. Sure enough, he says, that the boy did NOT have clinical mastoiditis and that doctors who are not ENTs give this diagnosis and don’t realise that it is wrong. At any rate, after that phone call to the on call doctor, things deteriorated with the i.d. doc. Yesterday, we had a follow up and she totally BLEW us off! I should say also, that in between these visits with the reg. i.d. doc, we saw her partner, who was kind and patients. She ran blood work and a chest x-ray. I had to call the office 15 times before I got someone to tell me the results of the blood work. So, I went in yesterday expecting exactly what happened. The doctor looked at the boy briefly and said, “I don’t need to see him anymore.” Brain and I were too mad, shocked and FRUSTRATED to ask WHAT??? So, being who I am, knowing we have an appt with the gastroenterologist (down the hall) in December, I waited for an hour to speak with the nurse, who so kindly bumped our appt up by a week. The doctor is staying in the office late JUST to fit us in! Our hope is that we can get the boys’ g.i. workup scheduled for the same day as his new ear tubes.
It breaks down to this: I am so frustrated with doctors who let bruised egos come between them finding a resolution for a CHILD! I am so thankful for doctors and nurses who will help soothe a worried mama’s mind!

I am thankful to you all, my family and friends!

Happy turkey day y’all!