[QUOTE=Ruffian]
What a pisser. Thing is, the ER doc was so nonchalant–he actually asked me why I thought it was necessary to come in. WHY DOES EVERYONE IN THE MEDICAL WOLRD ASK ME THAT?? Is it UNREASONABLE to think an internal organ going external warrants an emergency?? All of y’all understand my HOLY FUCK! reaction, so why the doctor and insurance seems to think it’s no biggie is mind numbing. Granted, it turns out it isn’t as bad as it seems, but it sure SEEMS pretty scary, riiiiiiiiight? Sheesh.
[/QUOTE]
When my son was a year old he had a febrile seizure. We thought he was going to die. It was one of the scariest things in my life. We called the ambulence, went to children’s hospital. The ER doc looked him over and said “febrile seizure, common, nothing to worry about. 50% chance he’ll never have another one, if he does, don’t worry about them unless they last longer than a minute, here is how you manage a fever.”
Took him to the peditrician for a followup, she confirms everything. Yep, scary. Yep, nothing to worry about. He’ll probably never have another one, if he does, he’ll probably outgrow them before he starts school.
A year later he had another one. And another. During a twenty four hour period he had six. After the sixth one we called his peditrician and her response was “He’s had SIX and you are just calling me now!!!” (“Well, you told me they weren’t anything to worry about.”) Take him to the ER, ER doc looks him over, sends us home “nothing to worry about.” He has two more and is no longer running a fever and they are coming closer together, take him back (by this time I haven’t slept in 22 hours), ER doc decides that there is no way she is going to get me to go home without a neurologist looking him over (and gives him a shot of valium perscribed by the neurologist on the phone which breaks the seizure cycle). We check in for the day. Neurologist drives in, looks him over, says “no big deal, slight increased risk of epilepsy, but you won’t be able to tell about that for years, go home.”
He’s never had another one.
But, with the exception of the on call peditrician and the ER nurse (who was the only medical professional to see a seizure) the “oh, yeah, not a big deal” was amazing.