Back here already?

[beanside]

Or did I just not leave?

Ah, the fun of winter in a pediatrics office. One of the lovely wack jobs who doesn't believe in any vaccinations kindly exposed two of my patients to pertussis (whooping cough) last week. Now, they have colds and horrific coughs. Joy. Let me just say, the way to culture that sucks ass. You have to jam a q-tip up their nose and into their sinuses/back to the top of the soft pallet--twice.

These kids will be a year old next week. Imagine the fun.

So, I didn't get out of work until nearly seven forty-five last night. And poor Jess was stuck with me, since we drove together.

But hey, y'know, I'm sure that vaccine would have caused a whole day of fever. The month of pertussis the kid will have, with its potential seizures and coughing until the lungs bleed, fevers up to 106, etc., will be much better.

I hate people.

Comments

[beanside.livejournal.com]

The parents were doctors, so really, they should know better, but yeah. We've actually started doing no more than two vaccines at any given time, to reduce side effects.

As far as the chicken pox, the reason we started giving it was because they're seeing a trend, especially in the southwest, for children who scratch the blisters to get infected by the flesh eating strep, which though not fatal normally, leads to a lot of nasty scarring and pain.

[hederahelix.livejournal.com]

See, that's the part I don't get. When the health care system works its because parents and health care providers talk to each other. Everybody learns, everybody benefits.

And the parents are doctors? Yeesh. Guess that just proves what we already knew: just because someone went to medical school, that sure doesn't guarantee that said person is actually smart. ;-}

I had an abberant experience with chicken pox myself. My mother, in a story that proves that she didn't quite realize who she was dealing with, listened to the random mother of a friend who said, "Oh my God, she's going into first grade, and she hasn't had chicken pox! She'll get them for sure in first grade, and she'll miss so much school she'll get behind."

Uh huh. It's not like I was already reading before first grade. It's not like I wasn't already correcting my teachers by first grade. But getting the chicken pox and missing school for a couple of weeks in the first grade where my teacher seemed more concerned with making sure we knew how to line up--that would certainly assure my academic doom. Riiight.

Ah hem.

At any rate, my recollection of chicken pox involves my mom telling me that we were going to go visit this one family so I could play with the kids, and I distinctly remember saying "Hey, but wait, don't they have chicken pox?" And mom assuring me that they weren't contagious.

I got the case from hell. Okay, not really. They weren't inside my throat, for example, but they were just about everywhere else, including under my arms. Mine didn't itch, they hurt, so I spent days lying on the couch with blankets rolled up under my arms, so the ones on my arms didn't touch under my arms, etc. I clearly am still carrying around a little anger about my mother's choice to expose me to them.

I have, however, (since mine didn't itch), only one scar, which was acquired when I tried to stretch a surgical rubber glove over my head to create a rooster's comb thingy so that I could waddle around on the floor clucking once I started to feel better. My aunt was in a PA program at the time, and she'd swiped me a real stethoscope, a scrubs shirt, and surgical mask and gloves, which since I wanted to be a doctor was the best present ever.

The glove snapped off, taking one scab on the upper part of my forehead with it, and that's how I got my one and only scar.

I thought you'd like the mental images that story brings.

Flesh-eating strep=bad. And also, a good example of evidence that might convince someone who thinks, "hey, I had chicken pox, and it didn't hurt me" why the vaccine is important.

Seriously, enjoy picturing a not quite first grade me with a surgical rubber glove on my head, waddling and clucking, and here's hoping you don't have to do any more pertussis tests today.