After we got home from my doctor appointment today, Maddy's school called. She had a low grade fever and a sore throat so she needed to be picked up. I decided to take her to see her doctor since she had a sore throat. My concern was that it was strep throat.
Our regular pediatrician was gone for the day, but the doctor we saw was great. He ended up doing a strep test and a flu test and said he would call in 30 minutes to let me know the result. This is where things started getting frustrating.
I got home to a message from the doc--his 30 minutes was more like 15 so I missed the call and needed to call back. There was also a message from our pharmacy so I knew something was up. When I called the doctor's office, the nurse I spoke with said Maddy's results came back positive for Type A flu and negative for strep. I asked her what to do about Emmy. Since Maddy had already tested positive for the flu, if Emmy began to show symptoms I wanted to know if I needed to bring her in or if they could just call in a prescription. The nurse said--and this is important to remember--I would have to bring Emmy in to be tested and to look for symptoms like a runny nose, cough, sore throat, and fever.
I then called the pharmacy back. The doctor had called in two prescriptions for Maddy. They could fill one, but they were out of pediatric Tami-Flu and needed to fax it to the pharmacy across the street. OK, fine. I pick up Maddy's prescription at pharmacy A, then go over to pharmacy B for the second part. Of course it wasn't ready yet so I pulled around front to wait. This is when I called Freddie to let him know what was going on. He also suggested that since it was close to the end of the work day I should call my doctor to see if they wanted to prescribe a preventative medicine to me since I'm pregnant.
I called my doc, the nurse was busy, and I was told she would call me back in a few minutes. By this time Maddy's prescription was ready so we picked it up and drove home. I got the girls settled for a few minutes, and my doc's nurse called me back. She said she would call in a prescription for me to take so if I do get the flu it won't be too bad. By this time Freddie was getting ready to head home so I asked him to pick it up for me. I also told him that Emmy was showing some of the symptoms the nurse had mentioned--runny nose all day, cough, and she said her throat hurt.
Alright, makes sense she would get it too. Of course by this time my only option is to call the after hours clinic. This is where my frustration quadrupled. I looked up the number for the Cedar Park after hours clinic, called it, and got an appointment. I told Freddie and he said he would stay home with Maddy to let her rest. When he got home, I had about 30 minutes to get there. Plenty of time even in Friday after work traffic, right?
I get to the clinic, and there are no cars anywhere. I called Fred to double check the address--yep, I'm at the right place. Doors are locked and no one's there. I called the after hours clinic listed on the door. Come to find out, the Cedar Park AHC is closed on Fridays. I guess the calls are automatically rerouted to a different place, but basically I had about 10 minutes to get to a different clinic that was at least 30 minutes away. No way I could make that so I canceled the appointment.
By this point, prego hormones took over and I was about to cry. I called Freddie and told him what happened. He called the other clinic for me and made an appointment for an hour later. After assuring him I would be ok to drive and my hormones were getting under control, I strapped Emmy back in and headed out--again.
When we got to the clinic, Emmy had decided she was done for the day. She began whimpering when I got her out of the car, proceeded to turn up the volume for the receptionist when I was getting her checked in, and by the time we got to see the nurse Emmy was in all out tantrum mode. She calmed down just before the doctor came in, but ramped it back up when the doctor tried to listen to her heart.
Now remember what the first nurse had said--symptoms of the flu I needed to look for were a runny nose, cough, sore throat, and a fever. She also said Emmy would definitely have to be tested for the flu so we would have to bring her in if she had those symptoms.
OK, after I told this to the doctor, the doctor shook her head and said that a runny nose and cough are not symptoms to look for and that Emmy probably just has allergies from something in the air right now. And she said that since Maddy had already tested positive for the flu, she didn't think Emmy would need to be. She wrote a prescription for Tami-flu for Emmy and said that if Emmy gets a fever over 100.4 to fill the prescription and start her on it, no test needed.
So my question after all of this is--why isn't everyone working for this group on the same page? It would have saved a lot of time, frustration, and gas if someone at Maddy's usual doctor's office would have given us a prescription for Emmy as well to use if she starts showing symptoms. And how can a nurse say these are symptoms to look for and a doctor say no, those don't count? Is the nurse erring on the side of caution or is the doctor dismissing something she should be looking for?
Anyway, we're all finally at home, the girls are finally in bed, and I'm absolutely exhausted. As it stands right now, Maddy is the only one showing signs of the flu. The game plan is to keep Emmy and Maddy separated as much as possible, I'm going to take the meds my doctor prescribed for me for the next 10 days, and Freddie is going to drink lots of orange juice and will himself not to be sick. :)
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