The Joys of Country Living
One of my boys (who will remain nameless for privacy’s sake) spent all day Saturday in our local hospital. Thankfully the government hasn’t gone and closed it on us like they were threatening a while ago (and I understand they’ve done a backflip on that particular proposal - something I am also thankful for).
After some rough and tumble with his brother, he sustained an injury to a rather delicate area of his anatomy. It’s not an area you want to take chances with so we whisked him into town Saturday morning when he woke with swelling to the area.
It’s obviously not an area our local doctor wishes to take chances with (thankfully we now have a local doctor after 12 months without one) and he admitted him to hospital for observation.
Today we had to take him almost 200km to have an “urgent” ultrasound done. Urgent in the sense that we couldn’t wait the 2-3 weeks to get a “regular” appointment.
The hospital rang on Saturday to make this “urgent” appointment and we were told to come at 10 am and they would fit us in when they could.
We headed off early to be in the town by 10am only to have them tell us to come back at 12 noon.
Okay.
Said child is supposed to remain lying down.
I had to travel the whole way down in the back so he could lie down in the front seat.
We don’t live in town.
Yet they want us to come back in 2 hours.
I guess that’s better than having to sit in the waiting room for 2 hours.
Just.
*sigh*
Poor kid.
I know medical services aren’t all that great in the cities either (in terms of waiting times, locations etc) but some days I find it most frustrating that the bulk of our services are almost a 2 hour drive away. If they couldn’t see us until 12, could they not have told us that? Or called us? We do have phones out here in the sticks. We could have stayed home for those couple of hours so that he could lie down comfortably.
Anyway, all looks fine and he’s on bed-rest until the swelling goes down. It looks like there shouldn’t be any permanent damage done.
There’s never a dull moment with kids is there?
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Better to be safe than sorry I often think! If in doubt visit the Doc for an opinion!
Hope all is back to norm soon and that your son can live a healthy life once again!
Glad he is OK. Poor kid. It will be a funny story to tell his gandsons one day.
The health system isn’t much better in the cities. A friend of mine went in three times for a hysterectomy before she finally had it. She is a single mom with 5 kids and no other family to help out so there were LOTS of arrangements that needed to be made, and she wasn’t happy to be sent home after getting everything organised only to be told to come back the next week. And the next. To say nothing of her stress levels (part of the reason for the hyst was to rule out cancer)
OUCH! Poor kid - hope all is well. I have to try and make a drs appt for my boy tomorrow - we have one of the lowest dr rates in the state I think, so it will be interesting to see if he still needs to see the dr by the time we get an appt!
So happy to hear he’s okay.
I’m just here to say that I am with you on the country living. My boy is having trouble with missing bones in his neck and we have to travel 3 hours to Brisbane once a month. For appointments that are at 1.30pm but don’t get seen until 5pm. And then you have to drive all the way home. It’s so HARD with kids. It’s so hard to keep them busy and happy for that long and then still enjoy the ride home.
I’m glad your boy is on the mend, but just thought I’d let you know that you’;re not alone with the sucky 2 and three hour drives to get the right services.
Boo
http://jtparr.blogspot.com/2008/09/wednesday-10th-of-september-part-one_17.html
OW!!!! Poor kiddo, glad it all worked out ok! Gotta love regional and rural hospitals. I’ve worked as a nurse so I do know they try there hardest in the work conditions they have, but we sat and waited for 5 hours for hubby to have stitches in his chin the other day, while people who were there because they “felt a bit off” from eating a hamburger were jumping around and complaining so they got in way before us…….
Who knows what the solution is to our hospitals problems, just glad he’s ok
I’m glad to read all should be okay but I SO hear you on the services offered in the boonies. Ugh.
I understand that everyone is so overworked and underpaid and nobody wants to coe out to the country but I feel you pain, Lightening.
YOWCH!!! Glad he’s okay now.
There are some advantages to being in the country when it comes to health. Take emergencies for example. Scott was born by emergency caeserian when I got pre-eclampsia. I felt fine. Wasn’t unwell at all but my doctor picked it up and by that afternoon I was in Flinders Medical, and he was born. All in the time it would have taken me to sit in the waiting room in a big city hospital. One advantage of arriving from the country in a plane or helicopter, you get to jump the que! How do you spell que? That’s not it is it?
….sorry. feeling a bit “mental” tonight. Not really on chanel!