Amanda's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 4/9/07 -------------------- 3/12/07 2/16/07 1/5/07 11/29/06 11/13/06 10/27/06 10/11/06 9/19/06 8/13/06 7/30/06 7/19/06 7/15/06 7/4/06 6/26/06 6/21/06 6/19/06 -------------------- Amanda's Introduction

Baby got a silly doctor

June 26, 2006

First I want to thank the wonderful people who have written me in sympathy about my brother's death. The support from the many communities-- RL and virtual-- to which I belong has been fanstastic. Thank you so much. I have certainly learned to cherish my husband and my son more through the experience. Today's topic is pediatricians. Why are some of them still in practice? Ours is a very nice woman who was recommended to us late in pregnancy by a friend who had the same insurance. Nice is not the same as good, however. She sent over the wrong blood test orders to Quest after our baby was born, necessitating him to go twice in the first three days of his life for jaundice tests. (I'm sure you remember those first days of screaming babies and the horror of causing them pain...) And he didn't have jaundice! Then she insisted we give our infant vitamin D supplements because "nursing babies often get rickets". Apparently, mothers who nurse aren't smart enough to take their babies outdoors, where only 5 minutes of sunlight makes enough vitamin D for a whole day. Why she didn't give that advice, instead of authorizing a treatment that could potentially increase his allergies later in life is beyond me. Just because I'm not shopping for formula doesn't mean I don't pay attention to what my baby needs! Then she kept insisting that he was getting the hiccups because he was hungry, when he would get them consistently right after he ate (we didn't ask-- we weren't worried-- she noticed his hiccups during a visit). He had a forehead ridge that developed at three months (vertical, not horizontal) that we were worried about. At first she insisted that he must have bumped his head (straight into a doorway? At 30 mph?). After two months it was still not gone. She asked us if he had fallen recently! Finally I insisted on seeing a pediatric plastic surgeon (we didn't want surgery, we just wanted an expert), who examined x-rays and determined that Cai's skull plates had fused about a year early, resulting in an unusually thick overlap that would disappear around his third birthday. She never even asked. At his first birthday checkup she asked how much milk he was drinking. I told her he was still nursing and didn't like cow's milk to drink, but that he was eating cheese and yogurt like a fiend. She insisted that he should be drinking at least 16 oz of milk a day! If he had been taking in that much milk, he'd have bones like a rhino. She has prescribed so many vitamin supplements... and none of them has been filled. We're not talking about a puny baby here; he's been 99% on everything since birth. There's been other idiocy-- another doctor who we see in her practice when she's busy told us that allergy tests before 3 years are fairly useless unless the allergies are severe, because at that age their bodies are still figuring things out (and they can grow out of many things). She wanted to give him an allergy test at 18 months due to his eczema and fairly bad asthma. She also told us to get rid of our pets. We went home and went through his foods one by one-- and after a week we realized it was the eggs he was eating for breakfast causing all of his problems. She hadn't even asked about his food. And a week after cutting out the eggs, no more asthma, almost no eczema. And he loves our pets. Why am I bellyaching about all these past issues? At his two year checkup today (during which we waited for an hour and a half in her little room with ONE toy and she had the nerve to be irritated that I'd given him some stickers from the drawer) she told me that he was old enough to discontinue whole milk. I told her that our family always drinks whole milk, so it wasn't going to be a real issue. She insisted that it was time to switch him off of whole milk, and I again told her that my husband and I have always had whole milk, and we wouldn't need to switch. She mentioned it again, saying that he didn't need as much fat since he was older. I looked at my skinny son (he's tall and thin, like his parents) and looked at my waistline (smaller than it was pre-pregnancy!) and then looked at her not tiny tushy... and I just let it go with a weird look. Why haven't I found a better doctor? Part of it is "the demon you know..." feeling. At least I know what to ignore about her. Some of it is location-- it is difficult to find an English-speaking pediatrician in my neighborhood. The rest is probably just a reluctance on my part to having to go through this again if another doctor turns out the same-- at least Cai knows her and her office. And when we have emergencies, we go straight to one of the two children's hospitals in our city anyway. Does anyone else feel this frustrated by their doctors, or did I just get a particular lemon?

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