<p>I’ll confess I wasn’t a closet nurser. I felt it was important for other Moms to know it was okay to nurse a toddler. Mathson spent most of the year he was three telling me he would stop nursing when he was four. On the morning of his fourth birthday he came into our room to nurse first thing in the morning. I said, “it’s your birthday - you’re four now.” His reply? “Not till 9:06.” He had one last nursing and never asked to nurse again. He was an amazing kid.</p>
<p>Even before my D was born- I used to get books from the Birth & Life bookstore catalog * Imprints* - run by Lynn Moen educational guru on all things related to parenting/mothering.</p>
<p>How thrilling to move to Ballard and get to actually go to the bookstore & talk to her- it was a great resource.</p>
<p>I also took a class from [Penny Simkin](<a href=“http://www.pennysimkin.com/”>Author, Doula, Childbirth Educator, Birth Counselor | Penny Simkin, PT) at the Birthplace.</p>
<p>I was planning on having my D there, but once they found out that I had a bicornate uterus ( which was discovered during the aforementioned hystosalpingram )- they handed me over to an ob/gyn that was closer to me. ( oh well- I was a little nervous about it anyway)</p>
<p>We still came to Seattle to take classes though after she was born- although we had to skip the breathing classes as I was on bedrest after 16 weeks & she came 10 weeks early</p>
<p>Me: 6 months pregnant w/ mildly abnormal pap smear.
Doctor: Doing a visual inspection of my cervix during a colposcopy, asks the nurse to pass him some equipment so that he can do a cone biopsy…
Me: Excuse me!!! I’m pregnant! Are you supposed to be doing that kind of thing when I’m pregnant.
Doctor: Oh… well it could lead to miscarriage or substantial bleeding. I guess it’s not such a good idea to do it now. We’ll wait until after you deliver.
Needless to say, I switched ob/gyns!</p>
<p>My jaw is on the floor with some of these stories.</p>
<p>Ever the Polyanna, maybe we should also have a thread of good doctor stories. I do have a few, myself.</p>
<p>oh that reminds me of one more veryhappy- sorry
The dr who turned out to be my own pediatrician had a horrible bedside manner.
My mother began labor with me a month early and her doctor told her to go to the hospital. By the time she got there- the labor had stopped- however, since the dr was now there- he opted to induce delivery even though it was early, so his time wouldn’t have been wasted.
Not only that , but after I was born and in intensive care, the pediatrician came to my mothers bedside and told her that if I lived through the night, I probably would survive. ( I was less than 5 lbs and had to stay another month in the hospital intensive care nursery- where no visitors were allowed, until I weighed 5 lbs)</p>
<p>However- my own first born was 10 weeks early, and while the resident ob on call that night looked like she was 15, which gave me the chills, the procedure went as well as can be expected & when she became critically ill they moved me to a single room and brought in a cot for my husband.</p>
<p>Also, the fellow pediatrican who took care of her while she was the sickest- was extremely compassionate, so much so that I worried about her getting too involved. She was concerned that D had necrotizing enterocolitis, and surgery was scheduled for as soon as they could get an anesthesologist that could handle a baby that had dropped down below 2lbs.</p>
<p>Her surgery turned out ok & her nurse came to see me while they were still working on D, just to tell me that she didn’t have necro.
I was kinda groggy cause she had been delivered by section, so I don’t think I responded the way the nurse expected. I was pretty overwhelmed ( I was a young 24 years old)</p>
<p>But then the nurse didn’t realize, that although my husband had been told that they didn’t expect D to survive another day, even if she survived the surgery, he didn’t say anything to me- and instead just left the hospital. </p>
<p>Anyway- the drs and nurses in that situation were great- can’t say the same for my H- but some people just don’t deal well in a crisis.</p>
<p>Oh addendum, I know a dr socially, that is working in research with premies, when I was reading about some recent research, I noticed the name of Ds doc when she was in the NICU. She is still at the UW , so I emailed her to let her know that D was doing fine and had recently graduated from college. She sent me a very nice email back. That felt really good. :)</p>
<p>Veryhappy, I was thinking the same thing today. I have had some great doctor experiences. I guess I figure those are the ones that “should be.” The ones that shouldn’t be make for more interesting reading!</p>
<p>But let me heap praises on my son’s pediatric surgeon, who has so compassionately treated S for the past couple years. Only he could have made a 13 year old feel comfortable about surgery on a particular part of the anatomy … and then made him feel comfortable with the idea that he was stuck with a non matching set for good. We can even joke about it at our house. The doctor is truly a gem!</p>
<p>Story of Bad Doc:</p>
<p>A friend of mine, with two healthy sons, debated and debated whether to have a third. she finally took the plunge, when her younger son was six. Unfortunately, it was a difficult pregnancy with lots of problems, and the baby died shortly after birth. A year later, she went back to the doc for her annual check-up. When the doctor walked into the exam room, he gave her a hearty hello and asked how the baby was doing. My friend looked him straight in the eye and said, “Well, Younger Son is doing great, if that’s what you mean. You do recall that the baby died, right?” </p>
<p>She changed docs after that one.</p>
<p>Story of Good Doc:</p>
<p>My older son was born six weeks early. When I was pregnant with my younger son, I had pre-term labor from 22 weeks on, and my doc put me on six hours bed rest a day and terbutaline to stop contractions. When I saw my doc at 30 weeks, I mentioned we were planning a vacation to an island (with minimal medical care – like, just a GP) at 33 weeks. He sat back, put his pen down, and sternly said, “This is a very critical time in your pregnancy, and I recommend you don’t go.” He made me cry – I was so upset! But, he was absolutely right. I wound up delivering at 36 weeks, and if I had gone away, the excitement and the exercise would have almost certainly caused me to deliver sooner.</p>
<p>My jaw is on the floor over some of these stories about the things OB/GYNs have said to their patients. Stuff like this is why I’m often reluctant to go see a doctor.</p>
<p>When I was a freshman in college, I burned my arm (fairly severe 2nd degree burn, about four inches by one). I went to the medical center. The doctor looked at the burn and stuck a piece of gauze on it with two very flimsy pieces of tape. That was it. He told me to come back if it showed signs of infection.</p>
<p>While sitting in his office, I was suddenly overcome by faintness and nausea and had to lie down. I asked him if this could be my body responding to the burn in some way. He said no, I must have just become hysterical (my word, I don’t remember his exact wording) upon hearing him talk about the possibility of infection.</p>
<p>The gauze, of course, fell off within two hours. The next morning I went to CVS and bought some of their burn pads, and used those instead. They worked great…my arm healed faster than anyone had expected, with surprisingly little scarring.</p>
<p>A college friend went in complaining of pain in his kidney area, and I think the doctor put it down to stress, or perhaps a stomach bug. He asked if there could be something wrong with his kidneys, and was told that that wasn’t where his kidneys were. Several months later he ended up having to get the kidney stones removed surgically as they were now too big to pass. He had to make up all his finals.</p>
<p>Oh Jessiehl, college health centers are notoriously poor - or at least they were back in my day. (Now that DS is at school I hope they have improved!)</p>
<p>Our college’s dr was famous for giving everyone who came into the clinic the “speckled pills.” Never told anyone what they were, but virtually everyone who came in received them. Once I was sick for a while, so I returned to the clinic a second time. The nurse asked me if I was taking anything, I responded, “Just the speckled pills.” She said, “Oh, don’t bother, those don’t do anything.” Another friend pushed the dr to find out what was in the speckled pills, as she had drug allergies. He assured her she didn’t need to know that, she couldn’t be allergic to them. Somehow she found out what they were; sure enough she was allergic to them. I think they were some type of antihistamine, they made everyone sleepy.</p>
<p>The other thing about our college doc was that he thought everyone had mono. Once when I was watching a football game, a player was laying on the field injured. The doc came onto the field and bent over him, and a student in the stands near me yelled, “Son, it looks like you’ve got mono!” The whole stands cracked up.</p>
<p>Son, it looks like you’ve got mono!" The whole stands cracked up.</p>
<p>That is funny.</p>
<p>Of course when D and a bunch of others * did * have mono- they were told that they had the flu/cold. So she kept thinking she would get better and she fell further and further behind in a critical class.
Does’nt sound like the speckled pills would have helped- but if she had known it was mono, she could have made arrangements in the case she didn’t recover quickly.</p>
<p>My d hurt her foot a while ago, and she said she thought it might be broken. I suggested she go to the health center. She said, “No, Mom. They’ll tell me it’s pneumonia!” (Foot’s fine without treatment; overreaction.)</p>
<p>College Clinic Doctor Stories</p>
<ol>
<li>Our clinic used medical school interns in the evening. I assume they were supervised somehow - but never paid enough attention to be sure.</li>
</ol>
<p>Once I had a high fever (102), headache and general “flu-like” symptoms. Doctor does exam and works on diagnosis. I could just see him wanting something more significant than the flu. After ruling out a variety of things, he lit up as if he had diagnosed this obscure disease and said “Measles! Do you have a rash you haven’t seen yet?”</p>
<p>Umm - how would I know?</p>
<ol>
<li> 2nd degree burn on the back of my hand (from boiling water). Almost-a-doctor says soak it awhile in this bowl. Bowl has opening 3" across. I looked at him, and then I looked at the bowl and my hand which is considerably larger than 3" and said, “How?”</li>
</ol>
<p>When I was 23 years old, I had a fast-growing benign tumor removed from my right breast. Approximately a year later, I was married and we moved to my husband’s hometown. Upon my first visit to a new OB/GYN, he says “My, that’s an ugly scar, isn’t it?” I wanted to slap him. How insensitive! When I left, I was encouraged to schedule my next appointment. I told them I would never see that doctor again. What a pig … I wish I had slapped him.</p>
<p>Had a young doctor at a clinic say something similarly rude about my chest when I was 18. I was too poor to go anywhere else…fortunately, he left. Unfortunately, the clinic was firebombed a year later <em>not</em> because of insensitive doctors.</p>
<p>I can recall a few instances of dr.'s saying the wrong thing to me…flashback to 1987…just before having my first child. In the meeting with my pediatrician’s practice ( the same one I went to growing up ) they placed me with one of the newer docs who told me point blank not to go in for a well visit un-prepared. if I had any questions, write them down before the appointment because she is very busy and doesn’t have time to waste. She was as warm as a witch’s ***.
Then after my daughter was born, she got a little stomach bug at three months old. When I called to take her in to be seen, I told them that she was a little lethargic. The first thing she did when I entered is to tell me never to use the word lethargic to describe a child’s condition.
I believe that was the last time I saw her…the next doc was a male and wonderful.</p>
<p>Another was the ob/gyn I had in NY when pregnant with # 2.
He was adament that a woman should gain exactly 3 lbs a month during pregnancy. I was about 4 mos along when he scheduled an ultrasound. In the previous three months, I hadn’t gained more than 6 lbs. In the visit that coinicided with the ultrasound, he instructed me to drink 36 oz of water for the test. There I sat in the office in agony with all of that fluid ( moms know what I am talking about here )
Before the ultrasound, he weighed me…3 lbs of water and 3 lbs of weight gain… to him, 6 lbs since last visit …he flipped out on me when I went in for the appt…and humiliated me within earshot of other patients and his staff. I was hardly a large girl. I gained 30 lbs in the entire pregnancy.
What a tool.
When I had # 3 , I developed a yeast infection in my breast ( nursing too,baby had thrush ) I went thru my ob/gyn, who gave me antibiotics. Little did I know that anti-biotics make yeast grow. Also a surgeon specializing in breast problems…a man again. I was appalled at the way he handled me. Both were totally clueless. After months of troubles, La Leche league of breastfeeding nazi’d recommended taking acidolphilus ( sp ? ) found in a health food store and yogurt. Problem solved !</p>
<p>My mother-in-law, an 83 year old, had a horrible cold and felt generally miserable. She called the internist’s office and received a call back from the nurse. After explaining to the nurse she had a good bit of drainage down her throat and was very stuffy, the nurse replied; “If you stop sniffing you will feel better.”</p>
<p>My next door neighbor, 40 at the time, had been having hip trouble on and off over the years, as a result of his teenage wrestling days. He knew that he would eventually have to have a hip replacement. When his hip started to really hurt, he called to make an appointment with his ortho doctor. He couldn’t get in for many weeks. When the hip got worse, he called to explain that something was really wrong & he needed to get in to see the doc. He was told he couldn’t get in any sooner. Even though he told the receptionist that he really thought something was very wrong, he was told that bad hips can hurt & he’d just have to wait. A day or two later, he couldn’t even get down the stairs. His wife called the doctor and insisted that he be seen immediately; she refused to take no for an answer. It turned out he had a very bad staph infection & had to spend more than a week in the hospital. When the ortho saw him that day, he asked, “How come you didn’t tell us it was this bad?”</p>
<p>I find it truly amazing the the human race has survived so far with all of these insensitive doctors. Guess it keeps going despite the medical and nursing professions. </p>
<p>First, we need to get rid of all of the doctors (and nurses and receptionists and x-ray techs.)</p>
<p>So then universal health insurance will not be needed, except for naturopaths who generally get paid cash and don’t participate with insurance. They can afford to spend at least an hour with each “patient.”</p>
<p>This plan will save a ton of money. Medical school debt will plummet.</p>
<p>And so many people won’t be SO hurt by physicians!</p>
<p>By the way, if you are in so much pain with an overwhelming staph infection, common sense would say to go directly to an emergency room, rather than call a private doctor’s office and explain that your 25 year old wrestling injury is once again acting up.</p>
<p>C’mon, is this the best you all can say about doctors, nurses and staff? </p>
<p>Seems to me the medical and nursing professions do a lot of good. This thread makes it sound so bad. </p>
<p>Why is doctor and nurse bashing so important? Has anyone’s relative never been saved by a doctor or nursing staff member? Is doctor-bashing some kind of fun? Slow news night?</p>
<p>In my life, I’ve had incredible respect for doctors and nurses and what they often do in difficult and pressured circumstances. For that, I thank them for everything, including doing wonderful things for me in 2007, in highly professional and sensitive ways. Even a group who were randomly found through an out-of-town ER. Bless them all.</p>
<p>aw, lighten up, swat parent! If you read a few posts back, someone acknowledged a need for a doctor praising thread! Go ahead and start it…</p>
<p>I’m glad to say that I have no contributions to this “you shouldn’t have said that” thread, but I have read it with interest… </p>
<p>Keep in mind that 50% of all doctors finished in the bottom half of their class. I daresay some of the docs quoted above were some of them…or at least slept through the “tact” classes in Med school!!!</p>
<p>I started the thread, and it wasn’t because I don’t think the vast majority of doctors are just fine. It was because there are times doctors & other health professionals say things that are pretty darn amazing. Some of the stories shared show just how insensitive or clueless even the most intelligent of our species can be. It’s not meant to be an indictment of the profession. It certainly did inspire quite a few to share their stories, though.</p>