Sunday, May 21, 2006

Fun Happy Times At The Urgent Care

Yesterday Bagel broke a glass and cut himself on it. It didn't look too bad, but I didn't really get a good look at it because he was squirming. He wouldn't let me put pressure on it to stop the bleeding, so I just slapped a few bandages on the cuts and wrapped the whole thing pretty tightly in Vetrap. I knew I hadn't done a good job, but I also knew there was no way in hell I could do a better job until he calmed down, and by then he'd be covered in blood if I didn't do some sort of job. As it was I had to wrestle him and pretty much sit on every part of him but his arm, and even then he spoiled a bandage by kicking it out from where I had it ready by my side.

This morning, when he was calmer, I went to change his bandages, and discovered that while two of the cuts were closed and healing nicely, one was still bleeding.

FH took him to the Urgent Care as soon as it opened this morning. They said his cut was going to be fine and glued it shut. But they were concerned because he was running a bit of a fever and coughing. I had already given him the albuterol in the nebulizer that the doc had prescribed for mornings like this one where he cried and fussed until he started coughing like to puke. They took four chest x-rays (the first three turned out blurry because he wouldn't hold still) and pronounced his lungs infected, AGAIN, and he was prescribed Zithromax, AGAIN.

Surely if a young child gets so many lung infections, something is wrong besides the infection. I'm going to see if I can take him to a pulmonologist and figure out what the hell is wrong. My kids get weird diseases and I'm sick of taking them to the GP or the pediatrician over and over again, only to be misdiagnosed and/or given antibiotics. I've actually had doctors tell me "I don't know what that rash is, put some cream on it or something." (I could have said that to myself and saved the $60.) I actually spend much less time and money if I just take them straight to a specialist and find out what's really wrong with them and get a truly effective remedy.