I grew up liking my eventual pediatrician (a Family Practitioner and DO and OB GYN who also was the “attending” on my birth - I came out while he was at lunch) even though I have had issues with the possible missed diagnosis of gall bladder problems in my early teens (we treated my scoliosis instead, which put off the pain a while, though it did come back and I just chalked it up to weakness/inevitability of pain with scoliosis).

And I, myself, am by no means perfect, either - I think I did run the count once on my lifetime consumption of Tylenol and estimated it at around 10,000 pills? Because people get headaches, they take a Tylenol. End of story. Duh. Now that I’ve treated the gallbladder problem and am treating the underlying allergies, I’m much better. I’ve had maybe 12 pills this year, total, of Tylenol.

But that’s just background, to add to the data that doctors seem to fire me a lot. ;)

When I took Helvi in for her pink-eye appointment, Dr Gardenia gave me a pile of neatly collated documentation. Wolfie’s records from McDoctors. I chose McDoctors as our ped when Wolfie was born because they had offices both in our hometown of that time and in the hometown we’d be moving to. But that didn’t always work out well. Different doctors, different diagnoses, belligerent staff that didn’t make appointments when they said they had - probably a lot of it had to do with the very McDoctory way you have to do things when you get to be that size of a practice.

The final straw, of course, was our trip to the hospital with Wolfie - 103 fever, listless, bright red body rash, still with an “AGE” (I’m learning to read the notes, it means Active Gastrointestinal Event, I bet) - and after seeing us during rounds on the emergency room, never stopped by to see us again for our entire friggin stay. We had to wait and be seen and discharged by the house pediatrician.

I did do a follow up or two with McDoctors, and found a “new guy” there who I liked, Doctor J. From south America, a good doctor who listened within his ability to do so (he was a bit old-school paternal in my feeling but that might have been auto-defensiveness on my part) and treated us well enough when we could see him, and I was generally glad to see him. We talked about Wolfie’s allergies, decided to try Claritin, and there we left it. Claritin made Wolfie wacko, I withdrew the drug, and never followed up.

So yesterday, paging through his records, I made myself read all those visits up to and including the hospitalization. Eventually I got Dr J’s page on the hospital follow-up. Then I paged on, and found a new Three Letter Acronym (TLA) to decipher.

On the one hand, I could have waited until I got home and just looked it all up on the ‘net (after work, after Helvi was down for the night and I was free to goof off online). On the other hand, trying to puzzle it out when I’m not familiar with the usual terms is interesting, too. I find the term SVD (spontaneous vaginal delivery) quite amusing - as the more common use of the word spontaneous to me feels more like a surprise or sudden easy thing. ;)

But the new TLA didn’t require any deciphering. I knew immediately what it was: RAD - Reactive Airway Disease. Shit. Didn’t C’s kid just go through this? Shit shit shit. And I’ve been blowing it off how long? And why the pancake didn’t he TELL ME?

Of course, this morning, in the light of day and after a good night’s sleep - why didn’t *I* follow up? Why didn’t *I* do more than just fight the allergens at home?

But between this mental wrestling and a tangential discussion on a board of computer gamers about how do we teach our kids to learn what is important and reinforce it, I wonder - how can we learn to get medical care?

From the number of doctors I’ve tussled with, super Google Paper Mom can be a bit too much. But sitting back and just accepting everything we’re told (when they bother to tell us) doesn’t work, either. But how to set up guidelines for a good balance of the two?

I like Dr. Cool. I like Dr. Gardenia. They don’t lecture me or over medicate the kids, they listen to our concerns, they are cool with the cloth diapers and wait-and-see approach with minor ear infections. I liked Dr J, but I wish I’d known he’d thought it was RAD, maybe I would have had the brains to take follow-up more seriously (The notes say Claritin and Zyrtec - Claritin is out so I’ll see about Zyrtec). I don’t want Wolfie to cough as much as we do/did - putting up with it because you just do. It disturbs his sleep and his life, and I think that’s having longer-reaching effects than I pictured, since I’m so “used” to being sick and just “putting up with it”.

I’ll make Wolfie a “sick” visit next week when we take in Helvi for her well baby check. I’ll bring the notes and talk to Dr Cool about starting up on Zyrtec for the boy.