What a day!

Wednesday morning C had a temperature. In the afternoon she ended up being kind of sooky and quiet, wouldn't eat... so I gave her apple juice and children's Advil. Which she only kept down for about an hour before she lost all of it. That was one unhappy child. We spend the afternoon just chilling out, and later in the evening she managed to eat supper and drink some diluted juice to get rehydrated. Overnight her temp came back around 3-ish so I gave her more Advil and let her sleep with us. In the morning she seemed okay, just really cranky.

However, since her cousin was diagnosed with a strep infection on Tuesday afternoon, I thought I had better take her in to the doctor to get tested just in case. Ear infections, flu bugs, those I will wait out for a day or two. But I know I can't treat a bacterial infection on my own, and I didn't want to give it time to develop into something more serious. So off we went.

Normally I don't have to go to the outpatient department (ER) because we have a family doctor. But he's on medical leave for heart surgery, and his replacement wasn't available, so today we were walk-ins.

What I learned from this experience is:
1 - it REALLY stinks to not have a regular family doctor to go to, and
2 - people are WAY less considerate these days than they used to be.

She was mostly okay this morning, but overnight her fever had come back and she was just really cranky. So about 10 I went in to the hospital. There were only a half-dozen or so people there so I figured a couple of hours and we'd be done.Well, a couple of hours later was when we first saw the doctor. On arrival they do triage and decide who falls where on the scale of importance. Which makes sense of course, but it stinks when you're going in with a minor complaint just because you have no doctor to go to. We were pretty much at the bottom of the list.

Anyway, the doctor had a look at her, then the nurse did a throat swab (which took her, me and another nurse to accomplish). Then we had to wait for the results to come back.Waiting for the results took hours. There was stuff going on behind the scenes with patients, people the police brought in and people who came by ambulance. One patient brought the entire department to a standstill for three solid hours.

DH called to check on us and I was so tired by that point it was pathetic. We hadn't eaten since breakfast because I didn't have any cash with me and I didn't dare leave long enough to go to the cafeteria (where I think I could have used my Visa) lest we miss being called. About three o'clock I finally asked whether they could just phone me with the results and the nurse checked and said we were next to be seen. So I thought, okay, we'll wait it out.

It was after 4:30 (and two more patients later) when we finally got called back in. Thankfully he said the preliminary test showed no strep and he gave me some tips to deal with her fever and sick stomach if they came back. (They'll run a more complete test over the next two days and call me if anything shows up - apparently 10-15% of negative tests are actually positive.)

So we left, and hurried off to get something to eat. C said she wanted chicken nuggets, french fires, ketchup, chocolate milk, AND a hamburger. LOL I settled for the nuggets and fries, but didn't figure she really needed a burger, too.

We spent a total of about 7 hours in the waiting room. And I think I spent 4 of those carrying her around. Little wonder I'm sore tonight. I feel like I walked a mile or ten today.You know what surprised me, though? Maybe it shouldn't, but it did. You know, NO ONE offered me a seat. A pregnant lady carrying a toddler, and NO ONE asked if we'd like to sit down, NO ONE asked if we needed anything... is chivalry really that dead and gone? :(