Children'S Hospital Doctors Excuse: Fill & Download for Free

This story may need a warning for those who are sensitive to death, loss, etc.My husband traveled by train 5 hours away to the children's hospital where his 18 year old sister was having brain surgery to remove a serious tumor. This was one of many surgeries she had, along with chemotherapy treatments and more over the years. This was the big surgery that they hoped would get at least most of the tumor out.The day of her surgery, I had my 20-week anatomy scan ultrasound for the baby boy we were expecting. My then-3 year old daughter was with me to see her little brother on the screen.I knew something was wrong when the ultrasound tech told me that my baby was not 20 weeks yet (according to size). Her face was very serious as she stared at the screen and said nothing else for what seemed like forever. She then excused herself by saying, “I'll be right back,” and left the room for about ten minutes (again, it seemed like forever). During the time she was gone, a pit formed in my stomach and I just knew something was wrong. When she finally came back into the room, she said, “I'm sorry, I was trying to call your doctor and couldn't get ahold of her. Unfortunately, your baby is no longer living.” There was no explanation as to why, and I never got an answer besides, “Sometimes it just happens”.I was in shock. The tears began falling and I tried my best to hold it together for my daughter who asked, “What's wrong, Mommy?” I wasn't sure what to say besides, “The baby went to Heaven.” She had a lot of questions right away that I had to explain to her later on because I didn't know how to at the moment.What happened next was the phone call to my husband to let him know our son no longer had a heartbeat. The moment he answered his phone, my voice broke. He had told me that his sister was in surgery at that moment, but I still felt the need to tell him then that we lost the baby. In the seven years we have been together, we have both gone through a lot, but nothing compares to this phone call to give him the horrible news.He would have to take the next train home to be with me as I was induced and delivered our stillborn son. He wasn't able to come until the next morning, and we went straight to the hospital from the train station. It was the most heartbreaking experience of my life and our relationship.The one year anniversary of losing our son, I discovered I was pregnant again. We now have a 4 year old son (and also went on to have our now 2 year old daughter).I still think of what our son would be like if he was here with us. He would be 5 today.His sister made it out of her surgery and they took out most of her tumor. It continued to shrink over the years with some additional treatments and medications. She now has a yearly checkup with her neurologist at the children's hospital but is overall healthy and stable.

Oh yes…at first I was shocked which quickly turned to anger.Bit of a back story: around 2010 I started to suffer from chronic headaches. Not the everyday headaches caused by stress, loud noises, strong smells etc., these things were terrible. I couldn’t see properly and I had to lie in a dark room until it eased, nor could I eat as my appetite vanished through the head-banging episodes. Having 4 children made it difficult to get any rest or take that extra half hour in a darkened room. I had to keep going, headache or not.I didn’t take any extra medication as I was already receiving strong painkillers for lower back pain which wasn’t relieving the headache anyway, plus I didn’t want to end up rattling with more tablets in my system.I went to my GP and explained the headaches and how they were powerful enough to wake me from a sleep. He immediately sent me for an MRI scan of my brain. (This all happened within 2 days and didn’t cost a penny thanks to our NHS.)A day after the MRI I returned to hospital for the results. As I sat opposite the consultant’s desk I felt very nervous as I could see over his shoulder an image of my brain with a weird white spot in the middle.Something like this…He explained that it was a calcified lesion which had probably been there from birth and was most likely caused by the traumatic birth my mother had with me. He then stated that this however was not the cause of my headaches and they would be looking further into the images and contacting my GP with the results.Sure enough I went back to my GP a few days later. I sat in the chair nervously again while the doctor excused himself for two minutes. I couldn’t resist peeking at the page of my report. Slowly and upside down I managed to read the words: “headaches most likely caused by mis-use of drugs”!Surely I wasn’t reading about myself; this must be the wrong report. I had never touched legal or illegal drugs my whole life!The GP came back into the room and, to be honest, I don’t remember much of the conversation. I was more shy back then and wouldn’t have dreamt of questioning a medical report.However, when I got home and thought about it more I started to get angry. This was going to be on my medical report for the rest of my life.I rang the surgery and asked to be put through to the doctor. I explained what I saw, albeit upside down, and went into a full-on rant about how I had never touched drugs and how dare they say my headaches were caused by a mis-use of them!He calmly explained that what was meant by the statement was referring to the frequent use of co-codamol which they themselves had prescribed for my back pain. I was taking the correct amount but what no-one thought of explaining was that regular use of codeine could cause headaches.Why couldn’t they just write that in the report instead of making out I was some junkie who abused drugs? I’m obviously still not over it as I still feel angry writing this answer; however, thank you for the A2A, it gave me a chance to get it off my chest once more I suppose.

She'll be okay.Five years ago, nearly to the day, I sat in the basement of a parking garage at Boston Children's Hospital in my truck, nearly losing my mind with fear.It had been about eight months since my daughter's seizures started. The first was at four months old. They were bad from the start, and were getting progressively worse. It was starting to feel like we lived in the ICU at Maine Medical Center. We were calling 911 nearly every week. Then every day. Her seizures just would not stop. Fifteen minutes. Then thirty minutes. Then an hour... longer and longer.Desperation had the doctors throwing nearly every medication at her in a vain effort to get them under control. So many nights in desperation. More tylenol... control her fevers. Ice. More valium. More phenobarb. When her poor body did get a break, I still had to sleep with one eye open. The emergency room was always ugly. Always somebody different, never any answers. Endless tests. She was like a pincushion; it was remarkable she even had that much blood in her body. At one point it took four different people almost two hours to get an IV she was so full of holes. I sat there counting the number of times they stuck a needle in her arm, and wiggled it and poked it deeper hunting for a vein, just to give up and find another spot on her to torment. Twenty, thirty times... I eventually kicked them out of the room and demanded someone who knew how to use a f***ing needle. Finally... they get it on the first try. Why didn't they just come in first. Why didn't I say something sooner. The damned guilt that will always follow me...Then one late night in ICU the seizures didn't stop. Two hours... three hours... almost four hours later and she was still seizing. Probably a dozen meds in her body at that point. Her body was so drained of energy... she was like a rag doll being shaken endlessly by some invisible force. I'm hopelessly pushing the doctors to quit medicating but someone new shows up every few hours and just follows procedure. Doctors rotating out of shifts and nobody in ER who knew what to do. Her neurologist at the time barely even existed. When we were lucky enough to get him on the phone, it was for a brief consult, never anything more. In one of the kindest acts I can remember, her pediatrician appeared in the hospital, around hour four of her worst episode yet, at 1:00 in the morning, having clearly dragged herself out of bed, and choking back tears. She couldn't do anything - she wasn't on shift and she wasn't a neuro, she was just that awesome.It was then they finally admitted they were clueless, and the last hope was a CVC in her chest. Paralyze her from the neck down, get her on an ambulance and send her to Boston Children's Hospital. It was a relief to see her convulsions cease, but the temporary relief was immediately replaced with the knowledge that the drugs in her system could shut her heart down, and we still had a two hour ambulance drive. Her mom and I followed the ambulance as close as we dared for probably the longest two hours of my entire life. I have never felt so, so, so helpless staring at that tiny little window in the back of the ambulance wondering if she was still breathing.But she kept on fighting. She's my little warrior. Once we were in Boston, people started to listen. They have some amazing neurologists there, and the first thing they did was ask us what we thought we should do. I told them to get the dozen or more anti-epileptic drugs out of her system and give her body a chance to recover. They hooked up an EEG and we removed the CVC line. Now we had to wait.With her mom by her side, I excused myself to the basement. And sat in my truck. And lost my mind. It took everything I had to bottle it all up until that point. I had to keep it together. I was her anchor. She looked me right in the eyes the moment she was born, but I hadn't even seen her make eye contact or barely open her eyes in nearly 12 hours. Nobody had any answers. Everything just kept getting worse. I still wonder to this day if anybody noticed the man hunched over in a Ford Explorer, in the basement of a parking lot, in the middle of the night, exhausted, unshaven, hollow eyed and crying like a baby.If I could call myself five years ago, I wouldn't need to say much. Just that she'll be okay.And if I could text myself, I'd be tempted to send this picture, which I took earlier today, just a few weeks before her sixth birthday:Fortunately, things started to turn around after Boston. It didn't happen overnight, and it hasn't all been easy. While we still face some challenges and depend on some pretty heavy drugs, her episodes are mostly under control. She has just blossomed into this amazing, brilliant, happy little thing. She starts first grade in a couple weeks - youngest in her class - and you would never even guess what kind of hell the first couple years of her life were. She has taught me what strength is.