Failed as a husband and father this week

blossmwrld

New member
Sorry in advance, this is going to be long and rambling but I need to get it out.

Characters: Me, Big B (43), wife, H (38, 16 weeks pregnant) and son, little B (8).

Background: Both H and little B have had a cold for about a week. Little B is a disgusting human being like all 8 year old boys and H works at a high school so no surprise. H thought she pulled a muscle in her back coughing Monday so she went into urgent care to be safe (which I thought was totally unnecessary and a bit dramatic). Urgent care doc spends less than 10 minutes, runs zero tests, tells her she’s pregnant so there’s nothing else he can do and sends her home with instructions to stretch when her back hurts.

Today:Little B comes in our room around 4:30 this morning carrying his garbage can with last night’s dinner in it and all he can say is “I barfed”. Ok no biggie, get him cleaned up and back to bed before H wakes up. An hour later I hear the unmistakable sounds of him vomiting again. Kid’s a champ and managed to get everything into the garbage can both times so it’s another simple clean up. Reassure him he’s alright and I’ll stay home with him for the day. Give it another hour and now I’m feeling like crap. Turns out I fed us some bad leftovers last night and we’re both dealing with it. Feel pretty bad about it, but nothing I can change by now expect staying home and snuggling him for the day. Luckily H didn’t eat the same things as us so she’s not puking.

We make it through the day and ask grandma and grandpa to come watch him while H and I go to her 16 week check up. Everything’s great with the baby but OB isn’t happy with how H is breathing and the back pain so she sends us back to urgent care for a CT scan to rule out PE (blood clot in the lungs). 4 hours later, scans and labs are back and H has pneumonia and hit all 4 factors for sepsis. Oh shit. They decide to admit her for the night but have to send her to a sister hospital 30 minutes away because they don’t have a 24 hour OB locally. BTW, I’m not allowed to drive her, she has to go by ambulance so that’s great.

I scramble home to pack her a bag and get everything she needs to stay in the hospital for at least one night. Send little B home to stay with grandpa for the night and get back. I can follow the ambulance to the other hospital and sit in the waiting room overnight or go home. H assures me that it’s better if I go home and try to sleep.

Now I’m sitting in an empty house wondering who the bigger asshole is; me or the doc who refused to even test H for anything on Monday.

TLDR: gave my son food poisoning and dismissed my pregnant wife’s concerns as being dramatic only to find out she had pneumonia and possibly sepsis and now she’s alone in the hospital for at least one night.
 
@tracieplaxton Thank you for the kind words and I love the breakfast idea. We will certainly do that this morning. Needless to say her OB was pissed when she heard about the first urgent care visit.

The clip you shared is spot on, but I have to admit that I’m afraid I treat her the same way. I’ve always had a pretty high pain tolerance, along with an aversion to going to a doctor unless absolutely necessary, and dismissed her complaints as being dramatic. I will not make that poor of a judgement ever again.
 
@harland206 Yeah, thankfully no blood clots and it’s “only” pneumonia I guess. Good news is the baby is fine, just an elevated heartbeat due to mom’s elevated heartbeat and mom is feeling better today than she has in awhile.
 
@blossmwrld Christ on sale.

I'm having a hard time processing this, as I haven't ever had the support you do so my thought is to thank your lucky stars that you've got dependable help.

Obviously this is all a reaction on your part, and you played it as best I think you could. H is in a place that will take care of her, little B is in a safe and trusted place. You're in a place where you can rest to see what the next round is.

The doc clearly made a bad choice, you made some good ones. Hope it all comes out okay.
 
@awakeinthematrix Thank you. We are certainly very lucky to have all four of our parents living within 30 minutes and thankful for the support they give. Logically, I know I’m overreacting right now but all I can do is learn from it and focus on making sure all of them are going to be ok.
 
@lof33 Thank you. I’m very lucky to have the family unit that we have. I’m not worried about me being sick, I know that will pass and it’s mostly my own fault. Focus now is doing anything I can to make sure H, little B and the baby are ok.
 
@saveddrummer I made my unhappiness known last night and was shocked when every person we talked to seemed to know who she had seen on Monday before even looking at her chart. I got the feeling that they weren’t surprised she was dismissed so quickly but they were surprised he didn’t order any lab work or even a Covid test. Once everyone is back home safe, I will be reaching out to the administration to file a formal complaint.
 
@blossmwrld You should probably talk to a lawyer. This is likely a malpractice claim. The severity of the case went from low to very high due to the doctors negligence. Even if you say you want to file a claim against the doctors malpractice, the administration might have a process where you can recoup the money for the hospital stay and ambulance.

Assuming you are in the US
 
@katrina2017 Yes we are in the US and at the bare minimum we are planning to go in next week and talk with a patient advocate about her lack of care on Monday. The money honestly isn’t an issue since we were going to hit our out of pocket maximum this year with the baby coming in August anyway, but we need to at least voice our frustrations. Admittedly I don’t know much about malpractice suits or what the outcome would be, but we have to say something to hopefully stop this from happening to someone else.
 
@blossmwrld Feel free to DM me, but I have found the best way to make sure something like this doesn’t happen is to hit the pocketbook.

The malpractice claim is just like any other insurance claim, although probably more convoluted. The other thing I would mention, sometimes ambulance rides are not covered by insurance. Really hard to find that out after the fact
 
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