Less Than Impressed

Again, I find myself less than impressed by health care in this province.

As I type, I am listening to Sontoo coughing, sniffling . . . not feeling all that well.

I took him to the clinic here in town yesterday. We waited about an hour (not bad) to be seen. The doctor looked at the spots on his chest very carefully. Given that Sontoo was vaccinated for chicken pox, the doctor could not decide whether or not it was a mild case. Fair enough.

“Keep him home from school until Monday, just to be safe,” I was told.

He then looked in Sontoo’s ears and throat and decided to take a swab to test for strep throat. Good.

Strep test came back positive. Prescription for amoxycillin and we were on our way.

Now, I know what you’re thinking . . . so what’s the problem??

The problem, my friends, is that we were at that self-same clinic two days prior, with the same symptoms, the same concerns. And I do mean the same. If anything, the symptoms were slightly less pronounced on the second visit.

And, on the first visit, we received a cursory exam, a similar may-or-may-not-be-chicken-pox diagnosis, no test for strep in spite of our expressed concerns about that precise disease, no prescription, a pat on the head and a push out the door.

The kicker? I’d take this all up with my family doctor, but he skipped town without telling any of his patients. I’m told the wait for an appointment with one of the two docs taking new patients in town is about 2 months.

Less than impressed.

Funny, but not really

Ya know, sometimes I have to laugh at the news. Even when it’s really not funny.

Take Canada AM this morning. In one segment, we have a doctor on, from Toronto’s Sick Kids’ Hospital, talking about food allergies and kids. (News Story HERE)

We get a teaser before the interview, letting us know that we can now introduce our infants, as young as 6 months, to potentially deadly foods, like peanut butter and eggs. Interesting. When my kids were that young, doctors were telling us NOT to introduce these foods until at least a year, to give the child’s immune system a chance to mature.

But this morning, the doc comes on and the first thing she tells us is that doctors, or research, or whatever, have had it all wrong for the last little while. Seems we may actually have been harming our children’s immune systems by withholding these foods. We didn’t give their little bodies a chance to learn how to fight an allergic reaction. 

By failing to introduce these foods at an early age, we were almost promoting food allergies where they might not otherwise have existed. Huh. It’s almost logical. And I have noticed that there just seems to be a LOT more kids with deadly food allergies than there were when I was a kid.

So . . . the punch line.

The interviewer asks the doctor how we, as idiot parents, should introduce these foods to our six-month-old children. The answer . . . in consultation with your doctor. 

The same doctor who, a week ago, would have told you NOT to feed your infant these possible poisons. The same doctor whose advice last week might have actually caused your child to develop a potentially deadly allergy.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t so much of a laugh as a groan; perhaps a snarl.

Have a good Tuesday.