The Murkey Waters of the Doctor-on-Call
It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, but the combination of feeling like a jerk and the extra time I have on my hands being up with my sick baby is forcing the issue. I have an incredible amount of respect for the physicians in our life and the last thing I want to do is to bother them or be inappropriate. I will admit, that I’m more likely to page a doctor when it is about my daughter because, well… it’s about my daughter. As a mom, I don’t always know what to do when it comes to her illnesses. A lot of times these things are still firsts for me. Having a sick baby is always a little scary.
Everyone knows that you can have a doctor paged if the office is closed; the question is how do you know when it is appropriate? I mean, a true EMERGENCY to me means ‘go to the emergency room’. Usually, the message states to press ‘0’ if the call is ‘urgent’. Is it just me or is there a lot of wiggle room in the word ‘urgent’? The ‘doctor on call’ thing is always murky water at best but last night I felt like what started out as a swamp turned into a sparkling pool, making me look like a total ass and disturbing an innocent (and obviously sleeping) MD. Camille has been feeling icky for ten days but just seemed to be a combination of allergies and maybe a run of the mill cold until about 48 hours ago. Friday evening, she developed a fever and her cough worsened. Friday night, she was unable to sleep because her cough and stuffy nose were so bad. The good-old Triaminic wasn’t helping so I went out in the middle of the night for some Delsym (plug/ding! This is some good OTC cough stuff for kids and adults- check dosing and my blog disclaimer relieving me of any responsibility). The Deslym was completely ineffective. Poor thing kept getting up and saying things like “Mommy, I’m having a little bit of trouble here. I have some real problems.”
Thankfully, my pediatrician’s office has Saturday urgent care hours so we were ready and waiting when they opened their doors at 8:30am yesterday morning. We saw an amazing doctor- which is par for the course at our practice- and Camille was diagnosed with an ear infection and given antibiotics. We also got a sample of something that I call “Mazel Tov” (I don’t remember the name but I was happy to get it) that was a combo cough med/ decongestant/antihistamine. I’m not sure if it was OTC or an RX sample, but I was very hopeful that we would get some relief from the cough. Oh, and we got an Ariel sticker, which is a huge deal. We spent the day snuggling and reading and listening to music and watching some movies, just being ‘sick’. Classically, Camille didn’t so much as doze off even though she barely slept the night before. We got her to bed just before 9pm and the coughing became awful. We had the humidifier going and kept propping her up on her pillows but her cough got so bad that she was gagging and was totally worn out. At 10pm, I asked Dave if he thought we should call the doctor. He said no. Around 11pm, she was hacking up a lung, gagging like crazy, unable to rest and Dave was handing me the phone. Her fever wasn’t bad, and she wasn’t wheezing, she just had a bad cough, but it seemed reasonable to call the doctor. I figured that I had done everything I was supposed to- taken her in that morning, given the right meds, humidifier, even the saline spray and that there was a possibility that something stronger could be prescribed for her cough so that she could get some rest. This is my first Mommy experience with a really bad cough, so I have no idea what can be prescribed for a 3 year old. I called the service and they said they would page a doctor.
90 minutes later, it’s late and Camille is finally so exhausted that she’s kind of sleeping and we haven’t heard back (very unusual- we’ve had to page with high fever before and always had quick response). I called again and was told that the doctors are calling back as fast as they can. I said that my call wasn’t as urgent as others may be and could wait till morning but was told that they could not take it out of the queue. If you have kids (and if you don’t, you’re probably not interested enough to still be reading this) then you probably know the drill- you page the doctor and a nurse calls and asks you a bunch of scripted questions and then the doctor calls you. I forgot about that part. At 1:30am a nurse calls me and asks me questions that although I understand are important, seem ridiculous (God help the child whose mother answers “yes” to these two hours after paging a doctor!!). “Is she blue?”, “Is she limp and unresponsive?”, “Has she stopped breathing?”. Like I said, I get it, I do, but I also know when to take my baby to the Emergency Room or to call an ambulance (blue/ not breathing). So she spends all of this time asking me these and I’m saying “really, it’s just a bad cough. I called hours ago and just wanted to know if she could have something stronger.”. Next thing I know the nurse is off the line and the phone is ringing again. It’s nearly 2am and some pediatrician that thankfully I have never met has been woken up from what sounds like a very sound sleep to call me about my child’s cough which has been a bit better for several hours at this point. This is the point where I feel like a total ass. I clearly do NOT have an emergency at this point. I have a child who has a diagnosed ear infection and is being treated for it. The doctor was very gracious. He did not think there was any need for her to be on any stronger medication. He suggested that we keep doing what we’ve been doing. Even writing about this I feel horrible again for waking this guy up! I mean really, what may have been reasonable at 10-11pm “my child’s cough is so bad that she’s gagging- is there anything more I can do for her?” was ridiculous to ALL OF US at 2am. So, I suppose the lesson I have learned here is that paging doctors is like swimming in murky water… it’s hard to know when and if it’s a good idea. Or perhaps the lesson is just that as a parent, you do what you think is best at the time and sometimes you’ll come out smelling like roses and other times… well we just keep on keeping on and remember to be thankful that some blessed souls went to medical school and have agreed to have a job that includes being awakened by overdramatic mommies in the middle of the night.
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