When it comes to my kids and their health I have learned - after 16 years and 5 kids - that you have to trust your motherly instincts. We have had our fair share of illness and medical issues and I have a lot of love and appreciation for the physicians who have helped us out but one experience we had 2 years ago helped me to realize the important role I must play as an advocate for the health of my children.
Reagan was about 18 months old and a very picky eater. She was basically living on pediasures at the time. (This is a whole other story....) At this time, she contracted a pretty severe case of diarrhea. After a few days, I took her to the doctor hoping he had some kind of magic bullet (in this case baby Imodium AD) to help ease her symptoms. He said that she looked fine and that the virus just needed to run it's course. He suggested that I stick to the BRAT diet to help ease symptoms. The BRAT diet being Bananas, Rice, Applesauce and Toast - things I knew wouldn't fly but thought I would go home and give it a try. Sure enough, she wouldn't touch the stuff so she really wasn't eating or drinking anything and still had diarrhea. After a few more days, I was really worried that she was dehydrated. She was acting healthy but I knew the limited amounts of liquid that she was drinking and knew she was in for trouble if I didn't turn this around. It was a Friday afternoon and I took her back in to see her pediatrician. I told him what was going on and that I was really concerned about her being dehydrated. At the time of the doctor's visit, Reagan was jumping around and acting like a very healthy and normal 18 month old so I can see why he thought I may have been overreacting. I was adamant that he give me something to help - at least tell me exactly how much fluid she needs to be taking in to stay healthy. When I left the office, I doubted in myself. I felt that I had over exaggerated the problem. So, that night I gave her a pediasure before bed and said to myself that she will be fine in the morning. She had fallen asleep in my bed that night so I could keep an eye on her and around midnight I heard her making some weird groaning noises. I woke to see what was going on and was horrified to see how large her abdomen had bloated out. I woke up Jay and told him that something was terribly wrong and that we needed to take her immediately to the hospital. He didn't share in my anxiety. "She is sleeping," he said, "wait until morning." Right after he said that she began to projectile vomit all over the place. It was like a scene from a horror movie. So, we took her to our children's hospital. After hearing my story they decided to give her an IV. Set after set of nurses came in to try and give her an IV - 8 nurses in total. They couldn't find a vein in her arm or her hand. A nurse finally addressed us and said, "I put IVs in children all day long. I don't like to stick them more than once so I'm pretty good at what I do. I cannot get an IV into your daughter because she is so dehydrated there is no fluid in her veins. This is a serious situation. We are going to give her some ant nausea medicine and then have you syringe Gatorade into her mouth until there is enough fluid in her system that we can give her IV fluid." And that is what we did. We finally got an IV into her and she spent 4 days in the hospital on IV. FOUR DAYS! She almost died from dehydration her organs had already began to shut down and I knew it but her pediatrician wouldn't listen to me. Twelve hours after leaving his office, I'm being told by a nurse in a hospital that my daughter is in bad shape. Why didn't he listen to me when I told him how sick she was. I knew what had been going in and coming out of her body over the last 2 weeks, I knew it wasn't enough.
I never went back to that doctor. I had really liked him too. He had helped out with some other serious medical issues that we had dealt with but I could no longer put faith in a doctor that wouldn't put faith in me as a mother.
Valuable lesson learned - as mothers we know our children better than anyone in the world. We love our children more that anyone in the world. We our advocates for our children and we need to always listen to our mommy instincts and never feel unqualified or intimidated when it comes to their well-being.
I'll get off my soap box now. Thanks for stopping by. Hope your day brings you a wonderful and unlikely surprise!
Here we all are at the resort in Park City, Utah. We had a great time riding the Alpine slide and roller coaster. See how happy and healthy we all are!!!
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