PART THREE: I hate ER doctors

This is where my chaos begins. I will try to keep this brief so you don't have to read a novel. We'll see how that goes...

It all started on Monday. One of my girls had an infection on her forehead, so she went to a local doctor, and later I took her to get her prescription. The doctor didn't do a proper examination of her, just gave her some pills. I got a call from her, and one from her mom on Tuesday because her eye was swollen and she was feeling worse. Well, I took her to the ER (we don't have any sort of walk-in clinic), and they did some blood work and determined that they needed to drain her infection. Before you read this next part, keep in mind that this girl weighs about 90 pounds. Well, they drained the infection then gave her 2 vicodin, 2! vicodin, for the pain. 90 pounds + 2 vicodin = bad. After we got some ice cream, she fell asleep until 7 PM. After she woke up, so had constant nausea, and vomited after eating or drinking anything. Another one of my girls looked up side effects of vicodin, and found that persistent vomiting is a serious side effect, so we brought her back to the ER. Well, my sick girl, Angela, is freaking out and is in incredible pain. They draw some more blood, but the nurse messes up, so she has to draw from the other hand. Angela hates getting her blood drawn, so this just makes her freak out more. To make it worse, they had to draw blood a third time because initially they didn't think they would have to rerun blood work since they had just done it that afternoon so they threw it away, but later they actually did need to run the blood work. Who does that? Who throws away blood while the patient is still getting treated? The doctors don't seem to care, and rarely came in to see her. They put her on some IV fluids because she was dehydrated, and they kept giving her meds for the nausea. None of the meds were working, so they eventually gave her a CAT scan. After we got back from that, 3 other girls from the floor came to see her, and the doctors gave her some more nausea meds and some anxiety meds that put her to sleep right away (thank goodness!). The CAT scan results showed some inflammation of the kidneys, and the doctor said that she thought she had something called Pyelonephritis, which is an infection of the kidneys. They put her on some IV meds, and transferred her over to inpatient care at about 4 AM. I have never said so many bad words in my life. Everything inside of me wanted to scream in the faces of the doctors and nurses, but I restrained myself because on the off chance I have to bring a girl to the ER at some other point this year, I don't want them treating us even crappier because I blew up in their faces. I stayed the night with her, and her parents left in the morning to come down to be with her. Two of my girls came in before their classes to see Angela, and they made me this really cute goodie bag with a bunch of random things. My girls are amazing. Angela woke up about 9, and the nausea set back in. The girls came back, as well as one of her teachers, so that was nice. I kept rubbing her back to help her fall asleep, but people kept waking her up. Her doctor came in from Monday and was a real pain in the butt (except, I'm using a much stronger word in my head). As he walked out the door, Angela kept saying I hate him, I hate him. I got her back to sleep, and then her parents came about 1:15. I filled them in on more details of what had happened, and then I left the hospital after being there since 11 PM the night before, and getting 1 hour of sleep at the most. Anyway, I hate the ER. The doctors are awful, they don't care, and I just hate them! They kept Angela overnight on Wednesday and released her Thursday morning. The doctor ruled that her nausea and symptoms were due to a vicodin overdose, which was their fault. Stupid doctors. They ended up waiving the doctor fee from Monday and one of the ER fees since we had to come back because they screwed up. The vicodin is out of her system because they flushed her with fluids, and the kidney infection is treated (the inflammation was also partially due to her being dehydrated, so the fluids helped that as well). Her parents took her home on Thursday so that she can get some good rest and recuperate. Anyway, that's the story. It turned into a novel anyway, that doesn't surprise me though...things have calmed down, and I'm so glad its Friday!