ImpostorMom

So I was gonna be ON PLAN this week, including exercise, in an attempt to jump-start my little plateau here. Well, what’s that saying about the best laid plans? I was all set for spinning on Wednesday after work. I’d psyched myself up and I was going damnit.

Then my phone rang at about 4:15 and it was Boog’s daycare. That is NEVER a good sign. It seems he had gotten sunscreen in his eyes THAT MORNING and they were calling to let me know that although they had washed out his eyes several times they were still watering and he couldn’t open them and he was crying that they were burning. Why on earth they waited all freakin day before calling me I have no idea.

I called his doctor before I went to get him looking for some advice as to whether or not I should bring him in. The receptionist was beyond unhelpful. When I got to him at daycare I decided that he did in fact need some medical attention so I called my doc’s office back and let them know I was bringing him in. The receptionist informed me that all their triage nurses had already left for the day and the the doctor was just returning phone calls right now, it was 4:45. I explained that because it was his eyes that I felt it was a fairly serious situation and she told me that she could have the doctor call me. :|

I hung up with her, said a few choice words and turned around to head to our local urgent care clinic. That place was thankfully deserted so we got in pretty quickly. The nurse was great but the doctor was clearly NOT a pediatrician. He had zero bedside manner for a small child. They numbed his eyes with drops and then flushed them with eye wash for what seemed like forever while he screamed and screamed in my arms. It was awful.

During the flushing the doctor explained that his eyes were numbed almost like he couldn’t understand why he was screaming. I wanted to be like, “Um, he’s screaming because a couple of strangers are holding him down, holding open his eyes and dripping cold saline in them. Oh and he’s TWO!” I didn’t though, I just held my baby until it was over.

After the flushing his eyes immediately looked better. They weren’t watering and the redness was already going away and he was no longer complaining that they were burning. Clearly medical attention was the right way to go. The doc then put some dye in his eyes and looked at them in the dark to see if they were scratched. And of course they were because he’d been rubbing his eyes all freakin day.

They aren’t badly scratched but it does require antibiotic eye drops every two hours. That is just a barrel of fun seeing as he’s totally traumatized now from the whole eye washing thing. Ugh, just three more days and we’ll be done.

Anyway, not only did I miss spinning on Wednesday I didn’t do any exercise at all. By the time I got home, had dinner, got the boy bathed and in bed I was exhausted. I guess I’ll be making that up this weekend with back to back spinning on Saturday and Sunday. Yay?!

Now I need to write a letter to my doctor to explain what happened and how we were totally unsatisfied with how it was handled. It’s difficult because I know that he will have absolutetly no idea what I’m talking about without explaining it. My doctor is wonderful and his mistake here is simply hiring crappy staff. Yes I should have asked to speak to a nurse the first time I called but the receptionist should have also put me on hold and gotten a nurse to the damn phone instead of telling me the doctor would call me back. (He didn’t, btw, and I’m sure he never got the message in the first place.)

I’m pretty sure what was going through that woman’s head both times I was talking to her was, “Oh geez, it’s 4:30, I so don’t want to be dealing with this woman and her screaming kid so close to time to go.” Well guess what, you don’t want to talk to slightly hysterical parents and crying children then don’t work in a freakin pediatricians office.

I went round and round in my head about how I was going to make this whole ordeal known to my actual doc because I feel it needs to be addressed and we won’t have another appointment (fingers crossed) for a very long time. I didn’t want to call and leave a message because I’d have to talk to that same receptionist and what am I gonna say “yeah, I need to talk to the doc because you gave me terrible customer service two days ago.” I decided on a letter.

I figure I can explain the situation calmly, state what I think should be done so that this doesn’t happen again, and then he can call me if he has any additional questions. Here’s hoping he opens his own mail.

This entry was posted on April 24, 2009 at 2:21 pm and is filed under Life, The Boy, family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.