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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
OK, that was a REALLY long day.
So a few hours after I sat here and complained about my day yesterday while pretending NOT to complain about my day, my SIL called: her daughter was really, really sick, something the matter with her pancreas, the local ER had said*, and she was being ambulanced to the children's hospital in Fresno. My SIL didn't know how to get there or what to do. So, seeing as how 12:40 AM is the Rachel equivalent of, say, 8 PM, I had no problem offering to drive her down there, impending snowstorm or no impending snowstorm. We got about eight miles along the shorter but more mountainous route (about 12 miles shorter, no crossing the city on surface streets once you get there or having to take the long freeway loop around, but 55mph or less all the way instead of half the route being on the freeway, so it ALMOST evens out time-wise) when it became obvious that we were going to get stuck putting on chains in the pelting snow if we kept going that way, so we turned around and took the low road.
I am typing this on a non-ergonomic keyboard and it's driving me CRAZY. I just had to share.
We narrowly missing someone's cattle who had strayed onto the highway on our way out of the mountains, but the rest of the trip was uneventful. At 3 AM when it's raining I can almost tolerate Fresno: no traffic, much less smelly, no heat, no fog. We got to the hospital, found my niece**, got an update on her condition (acute pancreatitis, which I have to say seems like NO FUN AT ALL), and ate in the awesome cafeteria before I headed for home with my nephew to get some sleep while my niece got admitted and her mom found a place to sleep in her room.
You know, that thing they tell you to do where you pull over to the side of the road and take a nap if you're driving drowsy REALLY HELPS. I slept for 25 minutes at the halfway point just after full daylight and was good to go for the rest of the drive home, whereas I had actually, um, NOT BEEN for about fifteen miles before that. I got home at 8:00, made a couple of phone calls, and then slept from 8:30 to noon. That, by the way, is feeling like NOT ENOUGH, and I am secretly*** hoping for a serious snowstorm that causes us to cancel Bible study tonight so I can sleep some more this afternoon instead of OH MY GOSH cleaning my house. Please?
*Our local ER is sometimes infuriating. The doctor who saw my niece kept telling my SIL that my niece was obviously "doing this" (having a 40+minute episode of unrelenting vomiting with a side of severe upper abdominal pain) "to get attention". In front of my niece, no less, who was nearly unconscious from weakness at that point. When the blood results showed something actually wrong, he smoothly changed his tune. Unfortunately, this kind of treatment seems to be the rule rather than the exception there, in our experience. SUCH a difference from the quality of care at the children's hospital. Too bad their ER is an hour and some away.
**My niece is really brave. I kept thinking about how my children would handle it if they had to go all that way in an ambulance full of strangers without their mom. I think they'd have to be sedated, no joke, because of the freaking out.
***or not so secretly anymore, I guess.
Comments
That sounds absolutely awful! I would've been tempted to strangle the idiot doctor who suggested she was faking the illness.
I hope she's feeling better soon, and that you're able to make it through the day and catch up on sleep before too long!
Posted by: Michael at February 11, 2009 02:20 PM
Probably the same a-- that gave nate cream ONLY when he had wounds appearing IN FRONT of the "doctor" I use that term loosly! I hate that place and plan on never going back! grrr. ok. sorry.. i hope she is doing better!
Posted by: debi at February 12, 2009 04:18 PM
Deb: Could be the same guy, but that kind of treatment is certainly not atypical there. Not sure if it's the same guy who saw C for about five seconds and announced that her hugely swollen glands and fever (which her ped AND the on-call nurse thought might be mono, but fortunately turned out not to be) were due to a viral sore throat "since the strep culture was clear"... and didn't bother to even listen to us when we told him that she didn't have a sore throat. But I wish it was, because the thought that there are SO MANY of that kind of dr. showing up here to work is a little scary. And I know he's not the same one who diagnosed T's sugar fatigue as "depression", or the one who told T that his chest-pain thing was NOT an esophageal spasm and rolled his eyes at my Internet research but who ten minutes later plopped a WebMD printout about esophageal spasm on the table in front of us and said, "There's your diagnosis," as if he had not just been basically calling me an idiot for going to THE SAME PLACE and reading THE SAME RESEARCH and coming to THE SAME CONCLUSION.
I could go on. Me bitter?
Posted by: Rachel at February 12, 2009 04:34 PM
A bedside manner that bad ought to be enough to disqualify a doctor, no matter what his other qualifications are.
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