A day at the doctors’

Oscar and I are recovering from a full day spent meeting with way too many doctors.  I thought that it would be great to get the pediatrician, autism specialist and all three of the eye guys out of the way on one day.   We have to drive from San Francisco to Stanford University, and Oscar hates the car.  You can tell I’m a first-time mom, since I scheduled the visit to his pediatrician first. Perhaps we could have done it all in one day, but those who have BTDT already know what the fatal mistake was.  Vaccinations. 

How is it that I thought Oscar was caught up on his shots?  He is SO FAR from being caught up.  In fact, he’s so far behind still that he needed to get poked five times (seven immunizations).  Following this nightmare (the screaming started when I stripped him so he could be meaured – 31 inches and 22.5 pounds!), we went for bloodwork, since there was a little discrepancy in his last CBC.  Yeah, that just didn’t happen.  Oscar started screaming the moment we entered the lab (I guess he remembers the room).  When the three phlebologists came up to him in a pack (one was an extern, so he was completely extraneous), the wailing hit an all-time high (Kathryn, if you’re reading, the screams were very similar to those you heard through the walls of the Hotel Elegance 3 in Hanoi the first couple of nights I had Oscar).  They grabbed his arm, tied it off and tried for twelve minutes to find a vein.  Tried, I say, because they FAILED.  I had to tell them to stop when I looked down to see that there was no blood flowing into the vials.  So, off we went to the autism guy.

Luckily, we had to wait.  I was able to calm Oscar down with a bottle.  Yes, I know I shouldn’t be giving him bottles of milk anymore during the day, but the kid needed comforting.  Off we went into the office, where this guy confirmed what the pediatrician had said a few minutes before.  He just doesn’t think Oscar is autistic.  Sure, he’s got a lot of the markers that should put him “on the spectrum,” but he had good eye contact, was pretty engaged when he was reading books to him and certainly was focused on him during our appointment.  He failed the name recognition test (where the doctor calls his name while Oscar is playing a toy), but we’re now going to get his hearing tested (even though I know his hearing is fine).  None of this is to say that autism has been definitively ruled out.  There are just other possibilities that might make more sense.  So, with this success, we were off to the retinologist.

All of the eye specialists were in the same area of the hospital, so that was nice.  We were able to camp out for a while and play while we waited.  Plus, eye doctors have the coolest toys.  Lots of stuff that lights up and makes noise.  Oscar’s a big fan of this.  And, the main guy’s PA is awesome – she gives him balloons when she sees Oscar, which he loves.  Unfortunately, nothing definitive came out of all of these appointments, other than the need to return in two weeks to meet with some other guy.  I think all of this waiting is in part to get me ready for the fact that they’re going to have to put Oscar under general anesthesia for all of the tests they want to do.  It’s impossible to really assess his vision right now, so they need to do an MRI, some really long-named test (with electro in the name, so I don’t like it) and some other stuff to see what’s going on.  The eye guys don’t like that he doesn’t talk (who does?), so they need to rule out a brain tumor, but they’re not too worried about it since he’s so advanced with respect to all of the motor skill-type stuff.

That was our big day out.  He was fine the rest of the day, but last night was horrid.  He’s running a (very low) fever, threw up once, broke out in a rash and was just miserable all night long.  Here’s hoping tonight’s easier.

September 25, 2008 - Posted by Oscar and Etta's mom | Parenting | doctors, eye thing, vaccinations