Yesterday morning I took Gleek to a local instacare center. She’d been running a high fever for two days and during that time had done nothing buy lie still on the couch. I left the house at 8:30 am. By 10 am we’d seen a PA, ruled out ear infection and strep, drawn blood for testing, and peed in a cup for urinalisys. Based on the results the PA sent us to a hospital for an ultrasound and a CT scan to check for apendicitis. By noon we’d been handed a diagnosis of appendicitis based on the CT scan. We moved Gleek to another hospital where there was a surgeon who was good with kids. By about 2 pm the surgeon had examined Gleek, discussed the CT with a radiologist, and declared that he didn’t believe it was apendicitis. By 4 pm Gleek had been examined by a pediatrician who agreed that it wasn’t apendicitis and believed we were dealing with a kidney/bladder infection. He decreed that we get another urine sample for testing and then start IV antibiotics. Gleek was dehydrated and didn’t pee until 7 pm, it was almost 8 by the time the antibiotics were started. By midnight Gleek’s fever was gone. By morning she felt well enough to sit up in bed. We were out of the hospital by noon.
I stayed at the hospital with Gleek all night. They had a roll away bed for me. The sleep was pretty interrupted because Gleek needed to potty twice and the IV drip beeped several times and the nurses had to come in and take vitals a couple of times. At first I was so exhausted that I just fell back asleep after every interruption. But around 3 am I lay awake for an hour playing What Could I Have Done Differently, and Did Anyone Make A Mistake, and Could This Have Been Avoided. Bladder infections are fairly simple to treat once they’re diagnosed. I’ve had several and all they involved was a trip to the doctor and a trip to the pharmacy. Unfortunately Kidney infections are a bit harder to deal with. I landed in an ER with one of those once. So could I have diagnosed this earlier and avoided ultrasound, CT scan, and hospitalization? After about an hour of circling this question I think the answer is no. Howard and I made the very best choices we could make based on the information we had at the time. All of the doctors did the same. But the next time Gleek lands on the couch with a 103 degree fever, I’ll much quicker about hauling her to the doctor’s office.
Another thing I mused on while listening to the hum of medical machinery at 3 am, was my belief in a cosmic parenting scoreboard. I realized that one of the reasons I was obsessing about the questions in the previoud paragraph, was because I felt like if I’d contributed to a misdiagnosis I would have failed somehow. I wondered if things I’d said led that very first PA to consider appendicitis when she might not have otherwise. If I hadn’t led her astray would we then have been sent home with an antibiotic and Gleek on the road to recovery 12 hours sooner? Did Gleek really need the hospitalization or was that just a side effect of the apendicitis misdiagnosis? In retrospect, she was pretty dehydrated. Her fever was running over 103, but her hands and feet were cold, even bluish. She wouldn’t eat or drink more than a sip in an hour. Her body was beginning to shut down. Within 30 minutes of starting the IV drip she looked worlds better. But she wasn’t that bad on Friday night. Do I lose SuperParent points for not recognizing that she needed a doctor on Friday? Do I gain SuperParent points for recognizing that she needed one Saturday morning? Why do I care about SuperParent points anyway? No one else is keeping score, just me. There is no cosmic scoreboard, so why am I spending so much mental energy second guessing the events of the last 48 hours?
I’m not looking forward to sorting out all the medical bills. Why is it that every single person who even walked by Gleeks hospital room will bill separately? I’ll bet we even get a bill from the surgeon who didn’t operate.