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When you have four kids it's easy to find yourself at the doctors office or hospital. Fortunately for us my wife is able to stay home so our children get less exposure than some. Unfortunately for us our kids seem to get weird stuff, or have horrible experiences.
The stories I'll tell you in this post are sadly about Jack, it seems he always gets the short end of the stick. All of these stories were preventable too, but sadly my wife and I were too trusting of doctors.
Jack's "choking" episode:
When Jack was almost one year old, he was taking his nap during the afternoon. We heard him gasping like someone does when they're chocking so my wife and I ran into his room. When we got in his room, there he was smiling at us, no evident chocking, but again came that horrible sound from him. We were scared he had something stuck in his throat so as quickly as we could we delivered him to the ER of our local hospital. Once there Jack endured the usual poking and prodding. I went back with Jack to help keep him still during the x-rays because my wife was pregnant with Anna at the time. When we got back to the ER room my wife was sobbing. She told me they were going to life-flight Jack to a bigger hospital. WHAT!? As parents of a one year old and our first child we were devastated. Blindly we followed anything recommended to us and so, off our son went into the wild blue yonder while mommy and daddy tried to get to the next hospital as quickly as possible. We tracked our son down and got into his room where he greeted us with yet another smile. The nurse practitioner walked into the room told us everything was alright, then asked us why our son had been flown over for the croup, and a very mild case at that. Luckily we had amazing health insurance at the time and didn't have to pay a dime. My son's birthday was just the following week also. What one year old gets to say he rode in a helicopter for his birthday (the only silver lining I can think of, tarnished as it may be).
The "Hold him down, I'll get his blood!" experience:
There are few things that have happened in my life before and since that have made me want to deck someone. It's pretty odd these people that infuriate me have the same M.D. following their name.
Jack went in for a routine check to our pediatrician. We mistakenly mentioned that Jack had been having some nose bleeds. The doctors face went ashen. He then proceeded to tell us that that was a sign of leukemia. No "well that's common in little boys", or "When does it seem to happen the most." Nothing remotely close to easing us into a hard pill like that. The doctor said they'd need to run some blood tests. Now I now it's not easy to draw blood, especially on a wiggly little boy, but they tried a total of seven times to no avail. The last attempt they said they weren't sure if they got enough but they'd let us know if we needed to come back (Yeah right!). The doctor then had an epiphany that something could be stuck up our sons nose. Again, wiggly boy, moving, not the patient sort. The doctor called in about six people, held our son down, with me idiotically helping, and stuck and looked up Jack's nose. This caused a bloody nose by the way. Jack still remembers the incident as does everyone involved. He's terrified of doctors and we're terrified to take him to one.
As crappy as I feel with the flu, it will never compare to how crappy I feel about being a naive parent. All parents go through this though, albeit some stories are worse than others. And as my son is half way between four and five, I'm beginning to see I will always be naive when it comes to our firstborn.
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