No Premature Sick Kids Allowed

I'm sure I've written before about Greg and me and our three- 3 week old premature babies getting escorted out of our first pediatrician's office by security, while the receptionist called Metro to have us arrested.

Haven't I?

Well, we did. We didn't get arrested though. We left before the police arrived.

We didn't like our first doctor. We had gone one time before and she left a very bad impression on us. She was unkempt. She was wearing a house dress with stains on it. She had dandruff. We had to tell her nurse to wash her hands before she touched our babies. We had to tell her too and she put like two finger tips in the water, pretending to wash. She had a terrible bedside manner too. My sister went with us the first time and none of us liked her at all.

We arrived 10 minutes late for our second appointment. We had waited nearly an hour previously. 10 minutes late. What's the big deal? What doctor is ever on time?

They had scheduled Sarah for 4:15, Gregory for 4:30, and Amanda for 4:45. So we got there at 4:25.

The receptionist told us that they would not see Sarah, only Gregory and Amanda because we were 10 minutes late.

I swear to God, I'm not lying. We took this picture right before we left that day. We had all three babies there. It had taken us over an hour to get them fed, changed, dressed, in their car seats, in the car and over there. We had no idea if they were even growing. They hadn't been weighed. They were all less than 5 pounds the week before.

Plus, we were going to be taking all three in the room anyway, but she said she wouldn't see Sarah. So we started raising a stink about it. Then they told us that if the doctor had "time", they'd see Sarah too. We were so upset. How could she not see Sarah? What if Sarah wasn't growing?

The nurse brought us back in the room and told us to undress Amanda and Gregory. Greg undressed Sarah. Then the nurse asked Greg to bring one over to the scale. So Greg brought Sarah, because Greg was pissed and Greg was determined to get Sarah weighed. The nurse asked him which one he had and when he told her, she went off about them not having time to see Sarah and to put Sarah's clothes back on.

That's when Greg went ballistic on the nurse and the doctor came running out of the back room screaming for security. Trust me when I say you don't ever want to see Greg, a 250 pound former linebacker, go apeshit. His veins actually pop out in his neck, while he turns purple and he grits his teeth while he's screaming like he might tackle you. He's like evil when he gets like that. I bet he used to psyche out the opposite player when he played football.

He was SCREAMING at the doctor telling her she looked like the Lunch Lady and she should get some new clothes and that she was unprofessional and that she had dandruff. He was screaming that she should look at her hair.

"LOOK IN A MIRROR!! YOU HAVE DANDRUFF! YOU'RE IN A HOUSE DRESS! YOU'RE UNPROFESSIONAL, YOU STUPID FRUMPY QUACK!", he was screaming at her through his gritted teeth and his chest was all pumped up like he might throw her into the wall.

I was bawling and hysterical and the babies were all crying and the poor 5 foot 2 inch security guard was so upset he had no idea what was going on. I had no idea if Greg might actually throw the Lunch Lady into the wall. Once when we owned our business, he threw a drunk client into the wall because he cussed at me and wouldn't leave. There was no telling what he would do with someone messing with his babies. The poor security guard would have needed a gun to stop Greg, believe me.

Needless to say, we got our medical records before we would leave and my insurance company kissed my ass for 2 years after that. We actually had the medical director as our primary physician for a long, long time and I had the cell number to the Chief Pediatric RN if I needed anything.

I never did though because my babies were healthy. That was just luck.

So after that experience and what I've been through this summer with Austin, imagine how my blood got boiling yesterday to read a post on the Triplet Connection from a mother of premature, 26 weekers, whose pediatrician didn't mention or possibly notice at her appointment that one of her children had what appears to be abnormal head growth. You've got to know that anything pertaining to abnormal head growth is a sore spot for me since my own doctor missed Austin's rapid head growth.

Her account of the story was that instead of her doctor calling her himself to explain that he'd caught this abnormal head growth, he had his receptionist call her. When the parents questioned the receptionist and called back to ask why the other son's head is growing abnormally too, the receptionist said that Dr. Brooks was "dismissing" them from his practice because he didn't like her husband's "tone". I encourage everyone to click on the link to her blog and read what the receptionist had to say to her word for word because she had recorded the conversation. It will blow your socks off.

Essentially the receptionist told her that her babies were too sick and premature and that they would always be sickly - too sickly for their practice and Dr. Brooks doesn't like to be questioned. The receptionist told her that.

So this doctor, who is afraid of being questioned and doesn't want to deal with sick kids, is refusing to see them, and now they have two babies with possible abnormal head growth, and none of the other providers in their network are seeing new patients -- new patients that are premature and have possible medical problems that is, because as soon as she tells them about her babies they suddenly aren't taking new patients.

You should check out Dismissal policy and Rules of Etiquette too. This guy is a total jackass control freak.

This guy might not see you if you have poor personal hygiene, or in other words if you stink. So you better wash your armpits before you go in there. Does he tell his patients he's dismissing them because he doesn't like how they smell? Do they get three strikes or does he just boot them to the curb? If you stink AND you're rude about stinking is that a double strike? You should read his whole website. What a nut job.

And don't go to the ER even though her doctor has the most limited and ridiculous office hours I've ever seen. Wait until 8:30 to noon on Thursday and if he can't fit you in to those hours, whatever you do, DON'T BE RUDE ABOUT IT!

Anyway, now this poor lady has children in desperate need of medical attention and no doctor and I feel for her. I hope she can find someone to take on the care of her three precious children.
All I can say is if Greg had had the misfortune of having this guy as a doctor, we would have been sitting on the curb for sure, or I would almost certainly been visiting Greg in prison.

I guess the frumpy Lunch Lady wasn't so bad after all.

Let's hope for the sake of those babies that there is nothing wrong with them and that they can get the medical care they desperately need.