Thought Two on December 23, 2009 - Always be an Advocate

So my second thought for the day was along the lines of parents thinking they don't have a say in their child's care or vaccination schedule. This is simply not true!!! We have learned very quickly that we have had to become an advocate for our son and do it very quickly on a number of occasions and he just turned one.

So recently we took him in for his 12 month vaccinations and I had done some research on the vaccines and their side effects and went to the appointment knowing that I didn't want him to have his MMR vaccination at this appointment. I wanted to wait until he was closer to 15 months old. The funny thing is I had called ahead and spoke with a nurse about it and she told me that was fine and that I would have to sign a form stating that I didn't get him that vaccination at the time and list the reason why. I was fine with that...

My main issue was that he already was going to get two other vaccinations that day and I felt like that the MMR which is for three other illnesses would have been entirely too much. Now I know what you are thinking... she must be one of those freaks who doesn't vaccinate her child!!! Well that is the farthest from the truth. Our son has had all of his vaccinations done in the allotted time frame. He just doesn't have them all at one doctor visit. To us it is worth taking extra time off from work to take him to the doctor several times to ensure they are all done.

So to get back to the day in question... we went to our appointment and as usual we filled out the paperwork prior to seeing someone and had made note of his runny nose and sleeping issues and chest congestion. So when we went into our room a nurse practitioner came in and sat down. She never once introduced herself to us and when she did start to ask us questions she asked us like five times if anyone else lived in the house with us and each time we said no... it is just us and our son. I think she finally began to read between the lines, but boy was she slow about it.

So then we started to tell her about some of the things going on with him like the runny nose, congestion and sleeping problems and she began to chastise us by saying, "well you just need to let him cry it out," and "by no means should you ever go into his room when he is crying and pick him up and take him to bed with you." We just kind of looked at her and basically said that is easier said than done when he cries for 30 minutes or longer until you do go in there and comfort him.

So then we went and had him weighed and she was very concerned by his weight or lack of weight if you will. She said he must have been weighed wrong the previous time he was in. We just shrugged our shoulders and said he is an active boy and sometimes eats and sometimes doesn't. She was not amused... Pediasure was in his future to help boost his weight.

Then comes the fun part of this whole visit... she starts discussing with us the vaccines he is supposed to get at this visit (remember all the while never introducing herself to us). That is when I spoke up and said I would rather he did not get the MMR at this visit. She looked at me like I had three heads and that I was bringing the plague down on the earth. She got very defensive and started in with all the scare tactics, for instance "Well he is in daycare and that is a dangerous place to be without vaccinations," and so on. Then she went on to say that Mumps was on the rise and that we were placing him at risk because it is not safe to not have your child vaccinated. She also implied that we could kill our son by not having him vaccinated. I then promptly told her to look at his chart and see that he had had all his vaccinations up to this point. She then quickly back peddled a bit. This next thing she said is my all time favorite.

I told her okay... how about this... I don't want him to have a live virus injected in him until he is a little older and can handle it better. Her response was well the Chickenpox vaccine has a live virus in it... I giggled and said okay then I don't want him having two lives virus vaccinations in one day and to be honest the MMR shot is really the equivalent of three vaccinations. So he would have had five shots in one day. That is crazy and absolutely unnecessary. It became very obvious to us that she had an agenda and we were not playing along with it.

I thought at one point she was going to stick her bottom lip out and storm out of the room stomping her feet and slamming the door on her way out. As you can probably imagine I was not in the least bit amused by her third degree treatment and judgement of our family and the decisions we make for our son. We had never even seen this woman before and the only reason we were seeing her on this particular day is because both of our son's doctors are preggers and were not working.

Well we won and he only got two vaccinations and has yet to get his MMR vaccine. Here is the kicker though and the thing that you continually go back to... FOLLOW YOUR MOTHERLY INSTINCT! Within hours of him getting the vaccinations he began to run a fever and that fever spiking to 104.5 at its highest point lasted for four days. When we finally got the fever to go away we had to take him back to the doctor and we saw our doctor this time... turns out he had a sinus infection all along and should have never been given the vaccinations because he was sick!!!! Can you believe it???? Our doc would never admit it, but you could tell that if she had been the one we saw originally that day, she would have sent us home and would have told us to come back for his vaccinations when he was well.

That day we called and complained about that nurse practitioner and it turns out that was not the first and probably not the last complaint about her. She had a huge chip on her shoulder and to be quite honest we were not the parents that she should have tried to unload it on. We care very deeply for our son and for her to imply otherwise was not and is not cool under any circumstance!