Life Lessons
So somedays I learn lessons in my life away from the clinic that I take back to the care of my patients and my clients. Their is truly no substitute for life lessons.
My 6-year-old daughter began to have stomach cramps Saturday afternoon which led to multiple episodes of vomiting which led my wife and I to take her to urgent care. There, we were expecting to get something to help with the vomiting and pain and go about nursing her through this. Unfortunately, the urgent care physician almost immediately told us that an appendicitis was likely and we immediately needed to run some bloodwork and potentially needed a CT scan and surgery in the morning.
Wow! This knocked both my wife and I back. The thought of surgery for my daughter was a shock. It brought on so many emotions, but I was mostly scared and I felt like I had no control over the situation. I had to rely on the doctor’s recommendations, a doctor of whom I’d ever met before that night, and move forward.
Lesson #1
It is a privledge for people to allow myself and my team at the clinic to care for their pets (patients). A client’s trust in a doctors is amazing and I need to remember that everyday.
Lesson #2
Doctors see and speak about medical illnesses and treatments everyday. Surgery is a word spoken without regard because it is commonplace. As much as I try to now, I should be more empathetic when discussing potential diagnoses and tretment plans. Significant surgery is not common for our clients and is a big deal for any patient.
My daughter had her blood checked and treatment began on Saturday. Bloodwork was kind of marginal (not bad enough yet for surgery) and we planned on monitoring for 24 hours. Luckily, she began to get better on Sunday, and did not need any further treatment or any surgery.
We did find out that it was just a stomach flu, not food poisoning, not an appendicitis. I made this diagnosis myself on Sunday evening at approximately 11 pm when I started vomiting and did not stop for several hours. I eventually needed IV fluid therapy, but recovered pretty well in 24 hours.
Lesson #3
Six year old children are walking petri dishes just waiting to get you sick. Love you Ally!
Glad to see you've come back! Posted in Background on Dr. Bobby
18. April 2009 at 2:17 pm :
Hi Dr. Bobby,
I came across your website as I was researching heartworm risk to dogs in Colorado, and I saw the posting about your daughter’s abdominal illness. The same thing happened to us, my 9-year-old developed severe abdominal pain (no vomiting) and we ended up at the ER per his pediatrician’s recommendation (thinking it was appendicitis). They recommended bloodwork and a CT scan — we had the bloodwork done and there was nothing too alarming there, so we opted to skip the CT scan and wait and see. That very day my son began to feel better, I couldn’t believe it. Then, a couple of weeks later, a neighbor’s son ended up in the ER for the same sort of thing. They were told that there’s a virus going around mimicking symptoms of appendicitis. Glad your daughter’s situation didn’t require surgery either, that’s just a terrifying thing for any parent to go through. And I think these sorts of experiences can be humbling, reminding us of how helpless we truly are in the grand scheme of things. As a healthcare provider yourself, it’s good you were able to adapt that lesson to your own practice. Thanks for the informative website/blog.