Dave writes:
We fails it (it is staying out of hospital).
Yes, Ivy has returned to hospital today. Just in time for the long weekend. So it’s a good thing we didn’t make any plans. Besides, the weather is lousy.
A lingering infection, unresponsive to oral antibiotics. Also murmurs of a new immunosuppressant drug to try … if we dare.
Yet her spirit remains indomitable. As I arrived at her bedside from work this arvo, she looked up from her entertainment facilities; a big grin as she sees me, then holds up her cannulated, splinted and bandaged forearm for me to see and exclaims “It’s all better!”
Tiff has taken the first bedside shift, leaving me free to heard the rest of the tribe home and into bed, before embarking on the evenings hectic blog maintenance schedule.
And the latest telephone report from Tiff: As at 10pm, the weekend warrior doctors have arrived and are already cancelling and re-charting Ivy’s meds.
It goes like this:
Child sent to hospital at the end of the week. Majority of doctors (including ours) shoot through sometime late Thursday/early Friday to go skiing, hobby farming or whatever it is successful doctors do on weekends. Junior Registrar comes on duty. Reviews childs’ notes and test results. Proposes a reasonable sounding treatment plan for the next 12 hours. Runs it by their supervisor over the phone. Supervisor rejects plan and orders something completely different. Reg is embarased and unconvinced but has no option but to follow orders. If on-call senior attending even bothers to turn up to review the situation (never before 9am the next day), justifies their decision with a haughty lecture of my-gut-instinct-beats-scientific-process-any-day and other such FIGJAM puffery.
Remarkable.
Now, where’s my shotgun?
Sorry, I forget myself.
Sheesh, it’s not like we’re living in Bundy, is it?
-DBT.
