Remember the good old days in our germophobic society when a prescription for antibiotics was as easy to get as a bottle of bleach? I had the squeakiest clean colon. I thought that was a good thing. I hadn’t heard the term “good bacteria”. It sounded like an oxymoron.
Then the hammer came down when all that over-prescribing created drug resistant strains of bacteria. Now when you need an antibiotic it’s like pulling teeth…or pulling two co-pays out of your pocket because they won’t ever give you the pink stuff the first time through. You always have to come back. That’s how medicine is practiced now. I call my co-pay the co-punch. It’s always a left and then a right.
But I have cracked the code. It’s not who you know, like back in the good old days when you were friends with a doctor who wasn’t your doctor, and you’d call them at home, they’d call the pharmacy, and you’d have the bottle in your hand in an hour, and start feeling better that day.
No. Doctors can’t take those kinds of risks anymore. Insurance companies are riding their asses, micromanaging how they practice medicine. Now the trick is to book two appointments for the same week when you know you need an antibiotic. Why waste your time, looking up their number and navigating their telephone blockade, waiting on hold to music that is between stations, only to find out you’ve called when they’re at lunch or it’s after office hours, or when they’re in their satellite office but that’s on the other side of town. Just schedule two appointments the first time a real live person answers the phone. The scheduling is almost as bad as being sick. Just get it over with.
“Hi. I’d like an appointment to see the doctor as soon as possible, please, and to schedule a follow-up appointment two days later?” It isn’t as frustrating to get an antibiotic if you realize ahead of time that you’re going to have to bend over and pay two co-pays that cost what four co-pays were last year.
This week, James was misdiagnosed for the umpteenth time. He has allergies. So, whenever he gets a respiratory infection, I bring him in and they say, “Does he have allergies?” I make the mistake of saying yes. I’m going to say no, from now on. Because they abandon the list of other possibilities and zero in looking for answers to support their first guess. The older James gets the more it sucks when he has to be dragged in for the second appointment. He weights 115 pounds. I can’t carry him anymore. And today, he did not want to cooperate. He felt really sick. He didn’t want to move.
Those days and nights between appointments when I have to listen to their coughs where it sounds like they’re drowning are awful. I feel guilty for not being a better advocate. What is it I have to say or do differently? Nothing. This is the new protocol.
Once Vincent was misdiagnosed. He had pneumonia. He had a fever. He was in really rough shape. I brought him in and they did a urine culture to rule out juvenile diabetes. I said cough and fever. The doctor heard diabetes? She ruled out diabetes but never treated what he had. Then she told me it was probably just a virus. Really, the 20 minutes were up and the waiting room was full. So I brought him back a few days later, feeling even sicker. My husband carried him in, he was so limp. They put him on oxygen, gave him a nebulizer treatment for his lungs and an antibiotic for the pneumonia. This is the child that almost died of a respiratory virus when he was an infant. How did they overlook that?
We are on our third pediatrician. I’ve been a mom for 13 years. It has been this frustrating to get an antibiotic when we’ve needed one all 13 years. I’m sick of it. I hate having to give the kids antibiotics but I hate having to get them even more.
Subscribe to the
RSS feed or 
Email Updates.Help us promote this article by bookmarking it to your favorite social network via an icon below:
Send these testimonies to congressional reps and Obama – they need to be reminded of these everyday horror stories. hugs to you.
add it to the list of stories I’ve read just like these and now it is a mile long.
i have this problem with one of my daughters.
My twins were born 7 weeks early and one of them was on CPAP for 5 days.She just seems so fragile with simple cold.
Doctors take relaxed approach but we know with experience to be very vigilant.
Two times last year she had to be given nebulization because it just deteriorated…
shraddha
I so relate to this post, Amy.
My son was sick for two months straight the winter before last. He wasn’t even quite two and we took him in six different times to see three different doctors in the same practice full of Wait And See-ers. They kept telling us things like, “Well, he has a pretty bad sinus infection, but let’s wait and see…” and “Well, he has an ear infection too, now, but it’s only in the left ear… let’s wait and see…” I couldn’t believe they were just leaving my poor sick kid in pain, over and over again. I know we don’t want to overuse antibiotics so that he won’t develop a tolerance, I get that, but how many months are we going to leave him feeling miserable every day and not help?
Over $100 in co-pays and a kid who’d been infected, coughing, wheezing, congested and feverish for nearly two months straight with the same respiratory infection later, I finally snapped one morning and drove him to the nearby Urgent Care clinic. I lucked out and got Dr. Old School.
Dr. Old School is a grizzled old fella who remembers the days when antibiotics were still used to treat infections, rather than waiting until patients were in need of the Emergency Room. He reminded me of one of the old country doctors of my youth who still gave antibiotics in the shot form instead of pill. He said my son had a double ear, sinus and chest infection and gave him a breathing treatment on the spot so he might stop wheezing. He then gave him a prescription for powerful antibiotics. After feeling awful for two months, my son was better in two f-ing days on the antibiotics! We are still looking for a pediatrician because we left ours after that incident and still haven’t found one we like. Sigh.
And BTW: I am one of those holistic-minded people who completely understands the need for good intestinal flora. I eat my organic yogurt. I avoid antibiotics for myself to the point of having calcifications in my lungs because I’ve had pneumonia so many times from my doctor avoidance (I also haven’t had health care most of my life). I am a sensitive redhead and don’t even take decongestants when I’m sick. But even *I* know that an infection is bad news. Isn’t that why we have antibiotics? I mean, isn’t that the main use for them? I understand that they don’t do anything for a virus, but I don’t understand why when a child has had an infection of any kind for months on end, why a doctor won’t just give us antibiotics? Grrrrrr.
Doctors need to stop treating intelligent women like a bunch of overwrought mother hens. We’re not stupid. I think we all understand why it’s important to not over-prescribe antibiotics at this point, but the “rationing them out until our kids end up with pneumonia” has to stop!
I feel strongly about this, can you tell? LOL. Great blog, my friend. xoxo.
And you know what happened when I went back and questioned the first doctor about her diabetes call? She sent me a certified letter ousting me from the practice because I questioned her. She wasn’t even our pediatrician. He was fuming but he was trying to retire and was handing off the practice to her so he didn’t say anything but gave me his private number. Grrrrrrrrr.
That’s what those Urgent Cares are for, to get the old school docs who will give you the goods.
Ousted YOU from the practice? Oh, that makes me furious! No, Amy “broke up” with you FIRST, doc!! Grrrrrrrrr, indeed.
She sensed I had already broken up with her first. So she sent that letter. I wanted to drive by her house and tp her tree but that’s so highschool breakup. I’m a mature woman now. *snort!*
I feel like my pediatrician is also rushing to say, “It’s a virus, let is run it’s course.” Sometimes, that’s true…and fine. Other times? Not so much. I’m seeing the same thing – such reluctance to prescribe abx. What about when they’re needed? It always seems like you go in once, and mom knows what’s wrong, but then it requires a 2nd trip to get some relief. Good to know they are cracking down on unnecessary meds, but not at the expense of not prescribing them when they’re needed!