Waiting...

I feel like I wait around a lot...wait for therapy to work, wait for insurance to approve something, wait for something to get ordered or reordered, wait for a call back from our social worker, and yesterday it was waiting on a doctor (not the first time).

As many of you know, Ella has chronic urinary tract infections (UTI). If you will remember, it was the reason for her first two seizure episodes (April and August of 2009). These infections grab a hold of Ella's body and cause havoc to all of her systems.

We have been seeing the "best" urologist for children in Dallas since Ella first started having UTIs and then we saw the same doctor when Will needed surgery to perform his circumcision...I love the doctor, but his office is less than wonderful...heck, they are less than acceptable.

I hate to go into ALL the ways that I've been disappointed by this office over the last 9 months, but yesterday was the last straw (and last visit from us).

Our appointment was for 3:45pm and I called at 3:35pm to let them know that we were running about 5 minutes behind (mainly because I knew that it would take me extra time to get her chair out of the car because it's heavy and just takes me a second to organize to lift). So, we arrive, sign in...and wait. We waited for 45 minutes to even get into an exam room.

SIDENOTE: (This has nothing to do directly with the office, but added to my irritation of the appointment.) As we arrived and settled into our waiting area we were greeted by a darling 2-year-old. How do I know her age? Well, she kept calling Ella a "baby"..."hey mommy, look at the baby", "what's your baby's name?"...BABY?!!? GRRR. So I asked this child how old she was (figured around E's age) and her mother told me she was 2 1/2. First off, she had great vocabulary...speaking in full sentences which I totally understood. But as she kept calling Ella a baby and I started to explain that Ella was older than her and not a baby and had difficulties, Ella started to get VERY upset. Anyone that knows Ella knows that it takes a LOT to get her upset, and this girl must have hit her buttons. The mom was doing NOTHING as this little girl was insulting my child. I wouldn't normally think that Ella understands when we explain her "condition", but I think yesterday proved me wrong. Finally the little girl got called back and Ella was perfectly fine to watch a Chipmunk movie and watch a true little baby across the room. And we waited...

When we got called back I was asked a question "do you cath her or is she potty trained?"...this irritates me. We have cathed her EVERY time we've ever come into the office. {In fact, one time the lady said that I needed to sit her on the potty and see if she would give them a sample that way...ever tried holding a 3o lb sack of dead weight over a toilet while trying to convince it to pee...and all the while trying not to touch anything in the bathroom...frustrating.} So, I said that they would need to cath her if they wanted a sample. Then the nurse asked if I thought she had a UTI (if I did then I would have made an appointment based on that!) so they decided not to test her urine because they don't like to cath if they don't have to. Actually, I wasn't terribly bummed about this because it's the one place that can't seem to ever cath her on the first (or 5th) try...and Ella is VERY uncomfortable every time. You would think that a Pediatric Urology office could cath a child...geez.

So, we get to the room and they tell us that it's not the room that we need to be in because it doesn't have a sono machine, so we just sit there and wait......no one EVER says anything about the fact that they are now running an hour behind! Finally the Nurse Practitioner comes in (the whole reason I made THIS appointment was to see the DOCTOR, because I was tired to talking to someone who knows nothing about our case). So, I walked out without seeing the doctor, they never tested her urine OR did a sonogram, I'm pretty sure they gave me a the wrong meds on the prescription and I needed to get out of there quickly so I didn't even wait for all of our receipts to print out.

Tired of waiting on medical professionals to have Ella's best interests at heart...how do I explain that I don't really care what else is going on in their office...when my daughter gets there I expect to be treated with respect and like my time and daughter matter.