Is there a doctor in the house?

In the list of professions I considered, I will be honest, pediatrician never entered my mind. That is a good thing, it turns out, because not only could I not have watched babies in pain or sick, I also couldn’t handle postal mothers like myself who have to handle a doctor and the myriad diagnoses they offer when checking a sick child.

What’s this about? Well, on Friday, I received a phone call from Roman’s school saying that he’d been crying and that they couldn’t calm him down. By the time I got back in touch with them, they had offered him another bottle which was temporarily quieting him, but something about it didn’t feel right, so Maurice picked him up early from school. When he arrived, Roman was still crying and totally red-faced with a rash and lips that looked like he was wearing lipstick. He got him home, expecting him to calm by then, but found him even more irritable. By now, I was on my way home from a meeting about an hour away and called Roman’s doctor to get some advice. I told her all his symptoms, including the fact that he recently began Azithromycin to treat what the doctors had thought could possibly be Whooping Cough. (Wondering when in the hell someone has had whooping couch in the last century? Yeah, me too, but I digress...) The nurse thought it was probably an allergic reaction or possibly a bowel obstruction based on what Maurice was describing as his writhing and crying. So when I got home (through 90 minutes of Friday Atlanta traffic), we climbed in the car and sped off to the nearest Emergent Care center.
Not sure if you’ve ever had to use one of these before for your child, but if not, let me offer some unsolicited advice:

1. The word “emergency” is relevant. If my child is bleeding and your child is only coughing, I win. It’s that simple. With only 1-2 primary doctors and usually a room full of kids, they have no time to use any other metric. Its like an ER, with less frills and staff. When we arrived, Roman was crying so hard and was so red that no one even asked me to sit down. They just pointed to the door where the doctors were and I went in. There were easily 10 other kids there, but I assume none of them were a 10-mth old, beet red, screaming infant.

2. Insurance is king. Though I walked right through, Maurice was tasked with doing all the paperwork, which by the way, until it was completed NOTHING took place in the room where I was ushered. Nurses came and went and all tried to stroke and calm him, but until they saw a card for payment, sympathy was all they were offering.

3. The staff may all be doctors, but that doesn’t mean they all passed sensitivity training. Now, I should preface that statement to say that may be unique to this center, since that was my experience. But the doctor who finally saw Roman was so calloused that when I started to cry as she examined my screaming son who she was handling as if he was meat, her response of “I can’t have two of you hysterical, so I’m going to need you to calm down” almost elicited an immediate beatdown. If she wasn’t the only doctor available for my child, she would have found herself with a much “fiestier” mother. After X-rays and prodding and testing for everything (they checked his eyes for scratches on his retina by pouring an electric green dye in them and passing ultraviolet light over, and looked for broken bones by bending all his limbs in various directions), she cavalierly mentioned his red face and swollen lips as possibly a reaction to the medication before she left the room to re-read the Xrays again. When I came out 10 min later to ask for something to help his pain, she informed me of an ambulance transfer to take us to the main pediatric ER…and proceeded to order morphine for him to “calm him”. By this time, I’m calling all my friends who even know how to SPELL pediatrician bc I am sure that this is not standard practice. But no one could respond before the shot arrived and with it, he definitely calmed but became a drugged limp body in my arms until the ER unit arrived.

The paramedics did wonders to calm me, even after they told me I couldn’t ride in the back with him due to legal restrictions (you should have seen me trying to negotiate!). They gave him IV fluids to help him rehydrate (he’d cried so much he had no tears or saliva left) and by the time we arrived to Children’s he was no longer flush red nor crying. Which put us in the awkward position of being the ones with no emergency, as babies with face lacerations and skyrocketing fevers became priority over a sedated but calm Roman.

And I was honestly okay with that. The nurses explained the procedures they would run and what they were looking for (they feared he might have small-bowel intussusceptions due to his abdominal pain - which is basically your bowels folding in on themselves. Yeah, i know, TMI) but both Maurice and I were pretty sure it wasn’t that. No reason, we just were. But I wanted to know what had happened to my son to reduce him to screams and fits for 4 ½ hours.

But I never got that answer definitively. The discharge papers said abdominal pain and the follow up at the doctors felt "fairly sure" it was a reaction to the medicine based on the rash, swollen lips and stomach cramping, but couldn't be positive since the symptoms were gone. Which left me feeling vulnerable and weak and most of all, helpless.

Which is not where I should have been. Because once the doctors ordered up Morphine for my infant and no one could tell me what alternative to ask for or why they didn't check for the allergies, I knew I had to let go of the situation and simply ask God to take over. I didn’t know what was wrong or whether it necessitated something so strong for someone so small, but I did know that whatever it was, God could cure it. And in my prayer, I specifically said “I don’t care how or what it is, I just ask that you take this sickness away because I know that only you can provide true relief”. And that is exactly what he did. Me reneging on my declaration because I "need closure" or something doesn’t mean God owes me an explanation, just that I need to reassess my faith. It was strong enough to trust He would cure it, so why couldn't it be strong enough to accept that knowing for sure mattered little, so long as Roman was okay.

It was a long night – 7 hours in the end – but when we got him home neither Maurice nor I could let him sleep in his crib. We nestled him between us and slept like we had when he was first home with us. And my tears that night were not for feeling inept or in anger for the doctor’s lack of bedside manner (even though I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t confront her in a dark alley)– they were of joy and gratitude for grace and mercy.

God gives miracles to us everyday – some big, some small – but all good and great things are His to give and ours to appreciate and recognize. Thanks be to Him always for such a gift as life - our own and the beauty of a child.