As a matter of fact, I am livid.
(Background - Jeffry had surgery on 4/30 for removal of a duplicate thumb on his left hand, and it had healed beautifully.)
The babies got their six month immunizations on Saturday morning, and Dr. H happened to notice that Jeffry's thumb / incision site looked red. It was swollen a bit and had a little white pustule on the border. She gave him an Rx for Augmentin to cover him in case it was staph - we carried on about our day, going to birthday parties and family get-togethers.
Jeffry started running fever Saturday afternoon, and by 10pm that night, it had spiked to 102.4. I tried not to be that hypochondriac mom that runs to the ER every time my kid sniffles, but he was feeling horrible. His thumb had swollen even more, and the pustule had grown. So we packed up at 10:30 and hit the road.
When the MD in the ER saw him, she drained the abscess and saw the end of a dissolvable suture sticking out - obviously not dissolved. She tugged a little and felt it still attached, so she said she would have to numb his thumb with a little Lidocaine to cut it out.
After numbing him up, she waits ALL OF TEN SECONDS for it to take effect, then goes to digging. My kid is screaming bloody murder on the table, gagging because he's crying so hard, and after a good five minutes of digging around in his wound, the MD says she's going to have to block his thumb so she can get deeper.
So, after another round of Lidocaine, and ANOTHER TEN SECOND WAIT, she makes an "x" shaped incision into his thumb and pulls out a pair of spreaders, so she can see down into the area. By this time, he's bleeding so much she can't see anything, so she has to put a tourniquet on his thumb to stop the bleeding. After five more minutes of digging, she finally gets the suture free and pulls it out.
(I capped the wait times because anyone in the medical field knows you need to wait at least a minute or two for Lidocaine to take effect. Poor baby felt everything they were doing to him.)
After all the "exploration" was done, his hand was bandaged up, splinted, and we were told to call Dr. F, his orthopedist, on Monday. We go home, dose him up with Tylenol with Codeine, and at 2am, crawled into bed together. After everything he had gone through, I felt he needed a good mommy snuggling.
The first thing Dr. F. says when we see him is, "so, they had to put him to sleep again to get the suture out?" Um, no. He was awake the whole time. Screaming. Dr. F. couldn't believe that they would have opened him up that much without at least sedating him somehow. His words were they did it "blindly." Which sounds about right.
I am so mad at myself because as a mom, I didn't speak up. I should have told them to stop, give the meds some time to become effective. But that's the nurse in me, looking back at what I should have done or said. At the time, I was just a mom, concerned for my baby, not thinking about the procedural aspect or the logistics of what was going on.
And, for that, I give my self a sad face. =(
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On a lighter note.... we have a sitter!
And because I can't post pics of just one and not the other, Jeffry tearing up the table paper at Dr. F's:
And feeling gooooooood from the pain meds:
(note his little yellow thumb splint - makes my heart ache.)
