You think your doctor is bad?

WARNING: What you are about to read may be long-winded, emotionally charged, and grammatically incorrect or, all of the above.

There are many things that are on my "to-do" and "to-see" lists while I am here in Europe. Today something on my "please please please don't happen list" happened. I was woken up early this morning by the sound of Landon having a seizure, and while I feel experienced in this realm now, it is never welcome or pleasant. As I have talked about Landon's febrile seizures, I have come to know many other children that deal with these. On the surface, febrile seizures are not technically that serious and is something that most children outgrown by about age 6. One of the complications with Landon is that he has complex febrile seizures where, instead of seizing for a couple of minutes (standard is under 3 minutes), Landon's seizures have all been between 15 and 20 minutes. After his last seizure in the States, the ER doctor was concerned about the repeated length of Landon's seizures and referred us to a neurologist. The neurologist did an EEG to determine if Landon's seizures were more serious, or had another cause beyond high fever (e.g. epilepsy, seizure disorder, etc.). Thankfully the test results came back negative for anything unusual and we learned that Landon's seizures were soley contributed to high fever. After this appointment, the Dr. gave us a prescription for Diastat, an anti-seizure medication used mostly for epileptics. He told us that even though the seizures were solely caused by high fever, it was still not good for his brain to be seizing so long and, in the event of another seizure, we were to administer this rectal medicine and then take him to the hospital.

So, fast forward to today, we administered the medicine and shortly after Ryan took Landon to our local hospital's ER. To begin, they were completely confused at to what a "febrile seizure" even was. (To be honest, I am still confused about their ignorance in this matter as we had quite the circular conversation trying to differentiate between convulsions and seizures with the Dr. Apparently they are 2 wildly different things here.) Then, as things were explained a bit more, they took Ryan and Landon into a room and asked Ryan what Landon's temperature was. Ryan said he wasn't sure because the last time it had been taken was 20 minutes earlier (at that time it was 105.8 fahrenheit). The nurse proceeded to give Ryan a rectal thermometer and asked him to take Landon's temperature and she would be back. (?!?!?!?!) She returns and asks Ryan how much Landon weighs. Ryan has no clue. She says, "Maybe 40 kilos?" and Ryan, having no frame of reference and obviously not thinking about it a whole lot says, "Sure" and she administers some Tylenol-esque medicine to him based on her estimation of his weight at 40 kilos (FYI - Landon weighs 20 kilos). Landon then fell asleep and they were largely ignored for the next 90 minutes. By this point I had taken Brayden to school and dropped Charlotte with a friend and was arriving at the hospital. I walked into the room to hear the Dr. explain that they had no reason to think he had anything bacterial, that it was probably just a virus that had caused the fever, and ARE WE SURE HE HAD REALLY HAD A SEIZURE? The next 20 minutes were the biggest waste of time ever, and, as mentioned previously, we had a wildly circular conversation about exact position of his arms during the seizure, the sounds during this seizure, etc., as if we had to prove that a real seizure had occurred. Then (this is when it gets good) I pull out the Diastat syringe that we had administered to Landon earlier that morning and I said, "The thing I am most concerned about at this point is just making sure that we can keep his fever down so he doesn't have another seizure and that we are aware of any side effects that this (holding the syringe) may have for him." (you see, the neurologist that gave us the medicine told us to administer and then take Landon straight to the hospital so we hadn't discussed too much about side effects, etc.) Well, that got their attention and suddenly they realized -being the smart Doctors that they were - that Landon MUST be epileptic and they just hadn't understood us correctly. They were shocked and stunned that we had this medicine and the Dr. and nurse immediately disappeared with the empty syringe and said they'd be back. At this point I believe Ryan made a comment to the effect that his guess was that instead of the Dr. and nurse returning, it would be 2 armed police officers ready to take us away for mis-medicating our child. My guess was that we had a 50/50 chance. :> The Dr. and nurse return, this time with a much more "important" Dr. who began asking us about our son's epileptic past. At this point I just about blew a gasket and explained AGAIN Landon's entire seizure history. The Doctor then says, "Yes, well, you mentioned that his teeth were chattering during this seizure (which they were - his whole body was shaking you idiot!) and you know, when your body temperature rises to a high level often time your body can chill, causing shakes and chattering of teeth. Are you sure this isn't what was happening?" The Doctor ended the conversation by telling me various ways to reduce a high fever (sponge bathing, tepid bath...) and saying that next time Landon was "chilling" to try one of these techniques instead of administering Diastat and lastly, to make sure to call tomorrow to set up an EEG to make sure that he's really not epileptic. (But wait, you just said it was the chills....)

Honestly, I was stunned and I am STILL stunned. Stunned that I somehow thought we were not living in a third world country when it comes to medicine! Admittedly, I was spoiled with wonderful doctors and specialists in Portland, but seriously - it was insane. If I haven't been impressed in the past with doctors here (and I haven't) I'm really not impressed now. To top it all off, we were rear-ended driving home from the hospital. Just one of those days.

However, the good news (and most important news!) is that Landon is doing well. He's received a blessing, he's completely doped up on Acetominiphen and Ibuprofen, and he got to watch movies (in English!) and eat cookies all day. I mean really, what more could a kid want?

Couldn't resist sharing this: The garbage in the room we were admitted into. In case Ryan's blackberry doesn't quite show the detailed contents, it's a mixture of dirty tissues and old diapers. Apparently the janitors have been trained as well as the doctors.