Soooo, I was a little upset with the pediatrician's office during the first week of Chuckles's illness and tomorrow we have the follow-up with the ped, so I googled a couple of things and now I am just mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad. Did I mention I was mad and feel like we got very poor medical care?
Let's start, shall we? On Monday, we ingested the tainted food. Tuesday, we fell ill. By Tuesday night, Chuckles was vomiting everything he was given, had a fever, and was unable to keep fever reducing medications down. We went to urgent care at 6 or 7 pm. He had a CBC (blood draw) performed and was weighed and examined. We were told it was probably viral, should clear up in a day or two, follow up with regular ped.
Wednesday was the holiday.
First thing Thursday morning, I called the ped's office to get an urgent morning appointment as he was not better. Clearly not better. The nurse told me to go back to urgent care because the doctor was too busy to see us. OK, fine. they don't want to make the sick kid wait. I get it. But, there was no ped on duty at urgent care (because he was at his office triple booked). By this point, I was pretty sure Chuckles needed IV fluids. Sometimes a mom knows.
The doctor at urgent care looked at the stuff from Tuesday, did not examine our child, and wrote in the file (because, heck yes I looked) that he offered IV fluids at parent's request because they were concerned about a 3 lb (in 36 hour) weight loss (which is approx 10% of body weight). Fever was still high and he wasn't keeping fever reducers down. Doctor did not suggest suppository tylenol, which I think was wrong wrong wrong of him. Get the fever down to help the kid from dehydrating. Oh, and heck, right here on the internet it says severe dehydration's definition is having any one or two of these, and let's see, Chuckles had six of them. (1) child unable to drink, (2) minimal or no urine output, (3) greater than 9% weight loss, (4) prolonged capillary refill (defined as greater than 2 seconds, which according to that means I was moderately dehydrated as well), (5) deeply sunken eyes, and (6) direct quote: "Not paying attention to toys or television, or even being difficult to wake up (this is a sign of very bad dehydration)".
So, I think that IV fluids were not only for my benefit but were due to my child's severe dehydration. Which according to everything, severe dehydration calls for immediate IVs and possible hospitalization. This was still four days before we went to the hospital. Four days earlier, I knew something was severely wrong. I am the mom and I know what I am talking about. His little eyes were sunken. Period. He looked like a horror movie kid all gray and limp.
Oh, and one more thing. So, a positive blood culture for salmonella means that septecemia has set in. This is quite serious. The salmonella bacteria usually stay in the intestines and do not enter the blood stream. Chuckles was very sick. Salmonella septecemia has a fatality rate of 3 to 41% depending on the strain.
OK, so I am really glad I read this a week or two after living it because I didn't need to knew that before. I need to know it now both for my forthcoming law suit with the food vendor and for my frank and honest discussion with our pediatrician about his nurse's unwillingness to have us come to the office and his affiliated doctor who didn't think 10% weight loss in 36 hours was cause for bells and whistles.
I'm beat and am going to bed.
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