Saved my daughters life when she was a baby

M

moialiceme

New member
When my daughter was about 18 months old she ended up getting a bad cold. Fairly normal for any kid but we kept a close eye on it. After about a week it started to go away slowly. One day two weeks later we received a call from the daycare asking us to pick her up because she had a high fever.

I took her home and gave Advil to her, the dosage based on her age. It did nothing and eventually I took her to the hospital. They simply gave her a larger dose of Advil which brought her fever down and sent us home.

The next day, her fever was back up, and a mixture of Advil and Tylenol , was not bringing it down. Again the fever was high enough to be a concern, and I took her to the hospital again. They gave her another high dose of Advil and sent us home again , saying there’s nothing wrong with her.

This happened the next day as well, but this time when I took her to the hospital, they told me to stop bringing her in, that there was nothing they could do for her. At this point, my daughter had gone from being a happy, playful toddler, to hanging onto me as I carried her like a sleepy monkey, that could hardly hold on. She had no energy and her eyes were always just half open and her mouth hanging open. She had trouble breathing and it was crackly.

I drove across town from the hospital I was taking her to that was near my house, to a Children’s Hospital on the other side of town. I explained to them that she was sick two weeks ago, started getting better, but now it come back stronger. I explained to them that she had had a very high fever for the last number of days, what the other hospital had done, and pointed out how sick and lethargic she was, and crackly her breathing was.

Like the other hospital, they were trying to push me out the door and just send me home, and I steadfastly refused. Finally a nurse suggested we should try x Like the other hospital, they were trying to push me out the door and just send me home, and I steadfastly refused. Finally a nurse suggested we should try x-ray her lungs. Well, it turned out she had pneumonia. It was so advanced at this point, that 3/4 of her lungs were covered, and only 1/2 of one of her lungs was actually “functional” not yet covered in pneumonia.

They freak out and put her on antibiotics, fortunately, it was bacterial pneumonia, which could be treated with antibiotics, rather than viral pneumonia. They could tell because viral pneumonia would’ve covered the lungs completely not just partially. The prescription was not enough, after two weeks, she still had the crackly breathing, so our family doctor extended the prescription with a higher dosage, which got rid of it completely.

I went back to the first hospital to complain. I told him what it happened how they had dropped the ball by refusing to treat my daughter. Well, it turns out that they had no record of me talking to a doctor whatsoever. The doctor told me not to come back, had never signed any record of our visit. The only note in her record was that a nurse had dealt with us. So each time we had seen a doctor they purposely left their name off of things in case something went wrong. So to the hospital, since there was no record of me, seeing a doctor, only a nurse, I was unable to file a complaint, even though I was pointing at the doctor that had walked by and said “that’s the fucking doctor I spoke to each time, right there”. the nurses, well trained though, made no effort to help us file a complaint.

The doctor at the Children’s Hospital, upon seeing the x-ray and knowing what I had been through at the other hospital, and also knowing that they try to push us away, said that my tenacity saved my daughter’s life. It was fear that made me dig my heels in and refuse to leave the hospital. I don’t know what made that nurse suddenly change her mind and ask for an x-ray (she said it was because I mentioned how the cold came back after two weeks, but I’ve been saying that to people for an hour, including her repeatedly) but I’m very lucky today to have my teenage daughter with me.

TL;DR
Two hospitals refused to look at my daughter with a dangerously high fever. Eventually got an x-ray and turned out she had severe pneumonia
 
@moialiceme Sharing knowledge that could save a life is so incredibly important. More so than it might seem when you are cruising Reddit/the Internet.

First hand accounts help people turn knowledge into action. I know some doctors suck. But now I know one specific way they could suck and how that might become a real issue for me in the future. Thank you again.
 
@nan13 I'm neither passive nor conflict averse but in cases like this I honestly just wouldn't consider it as an option to be a squeaky wheel. Like the doctors know better than I do so if they say we're good then I'd just take it at face value. Now I know better!
 
@nan13 It's definitely my wife who is crazy assertive over our kids. It's started to rub off on me given that she's usually been right!
 
@moialiceme Thank you for sharing. I find that I can be too agreeable and non-confrontational, and one of my biggest worries is that it would be to the detriment of my family in critical situations such as yours. This is a great reminder to me that I need to be tenacious when it comes to advocating for them.
 
@godsdaughter50 To add to this, everyone get a pulse ox. $15 on Amazon.Reads O2 saturation in your kids' blood. If they have raspy breathing or a bad caugh it'll give you a lot of peace of mind that your kid is not oxygen deprived. Can catch something like this very quickly.
 
@moialiceme You can pick those up at Walgreens and CVS as well. My wife and I wear watches that measure pulse ox, but we also have a device for it as well, for future travels. Helpful to keep an eye on oxygen levels as well, regarding things like covid, and other illnesses, that can lower the oxygenation level of your blood.
 
@katrina2017 Even the hospital ones are such a pain. They have to move them around a lot to get a good reading and if it's a constant monitoring one, the little bandaid like adhesive keeps coming off.

It really seems to come down to getting it into position once in a while to check for an accurate "high score" or such.
 
@godsdaughter50 I'm gonna get downvoted for this, but I have to do this public service announcement, cause OP's story is causing a lot of other dads to come to the same wrong conclusion. Let me unwind this story to help protect everyone else's kids from the same mistakes:

Toddlers don't understand germ theory. They're not constantly washing their hands and using hand sanitizer and they're horrible at keeping their hands out of their mouth, nose and eyes. Your kid had a viral upper respiratory tract infection with a fever that didn't even need to be treated in the first place. That fever didn't respond to some OTC meds you gave her, so you dragged her to a cesspool of a hospital, where they regularly treat patients for pneumonia and where hospital-acquired pneumonia is a real thing. They checked her temp and did an exam, which I'm sure included a lung exam, which can typically pick up pneumonia as diminished breath sounds, egophony, etc and they basically told you to keep her home until her URI had run its course. Despite that advice, you brought her to that cesspool three times for the same thing, with the same outcome. Then the bacteria that she picked up from another patient at the hospital started to really make her sick. She became the "sleepy monkey" that actually needed help. She almost certainly didn't have a bacterial pneumonia before her behavior started to change, which means nobody at that first hospital did anything but give you good advice.

Yes, there's a small chance she picked the bacteria up at home, but way more likely she picked it up at the hospital -- Google "hospital acquired pneumonia." Every time you go to a hospital, there's a chance you could be harmed by a medical error and there's a chance you could pick up a drug-resistant pathogen. I'm not trying to be mean here, but the only part of the story where I see that someone did something wrong is you taking your daughter to the same hospital so many times.

I don't understand how so many people read this story and come to the conclusion that the first doctor needs to have a complaint filed against him or something. The second hospital's initial recommendation was the exact same thing, which only supports the recommendations of the first hospital based on the history and exam findings. The worrying thing is that his daughter had gotten worse, and it is when the second hospital got that piece of info that they correctly changed gears and found the new issue.

Moral of this story should have been that you should generally listen to medical advice. If you're unsure, get one single second opinion from someone who is more qualified (like the pediatric hospital for this pediatric patient). If you get the same answer, stop, unless something changes. At worst, OP caused his daughter's pneumonia and, at best, he wasted time and money going to the first hospital three times for a fever that didn't need to be treated. It was only the trip to that second hospital, when his daughter's behavior changed, that was needed at all.

I know, its not nice and not what you all want to hear, so let the downvotes start. If it saves one kid from going to the hospital unnecessarily, its worth it.
 
@mk22 Dang, thanks so much for typing this. Makes perfect sense actually.

Just hope you don't blame OP. They didn't make that mistake on purpose and it's something anyone could've done
 
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