About three weeks ago, my two youngest kiddos became very sick. VERY SICK. This was evidenced by the fact that I finally, after several days, decided to take them to the doctor. I almost never take my kids to the doctor unless they are going in for a scheduled check up. Or someone’s toe is about to fall off. But since they both had barely eaten in days and neither could stand up on their own (OK, that’s normal for Violet at six months old, but not so much for Eli), I finally called the pediatrician’s office and took them in. It was on a Saturday, or "take what you can get" day. My normal pediatrician wasn’t there. Instead, I got a young male doctor who is new to the practice. We’ll just call him Dr. Young, since I still don’t know (or care) what his real name is.
When I saw Dr. Young initially, he seemed to be pretty decent. Of course, I was stressed out and had only gotten, oh, maybe 15 minutes of sleep that week, so he could have diagnosed my kids with bubonic plague and I might just not remember. But he prescribed them both antibiotics (and then, not so endearingly, displayed a complete inability to properly send the prescription into my pharmacy) and seemed reassuring, so I left feeling mostly positive about him. I even scheduled the follow-up appointment that he said was standard. Now, I KNOW that an ear infection (what he ended up treating them for) does not require a follow-up. But given how sick they were, I decided that maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.
Which brings us to today. And five quick and easy steps for how to lose a patient in 10 minutes.
