Deep breaths

Namine had a pulmonology appointment today. Getting the appointment set was stressful enough, to say nothing of the fact that we needed to make sure Namine’s lungs were okay. There’s no reason for alarm, though; Namine is fine, and the doctor was content with increasing her inhaler dose and prescribing an anti-inflammatory. Getting to this…

Namine had a pulmonology appointment today. Getting the appointment set was stressful enough, to say nothing of the fact that we needed to make sure Namine’s lungs were okay. There’s no reason for alarm, though; Namine is fine, and the doctor was content with increasing her inhaler dose and prescribing an anti-inflammatory. Getting to this point was a bucket and a half of crazy, though.

Namine has been fighting this congestion for a few days now. Jessica tried calling pulmonology directly on Tuesday, to no avail. So she called the special needs nurse, who also tried to contact pulmonology – at first unsuccessfully, but she eventually got through. You know, because hospital staff. We just needed to talk to a pulmonology nurse so that we could set up an appointment. How hard could that be?

Right. So later on Tuesday, Jessica did get a call from pulmonology. Unfortunately, it was not a nurse – it was the on-call doctor. The problem? He couldn’t schedule appointments.

Our reaction.
Our reaction.

When Jessica told the special needs nurse about it later, she was pretty upset. (The nurse, I mean, but Jessica was pretty peeved too.) “That’s not at all what I told them!” Oh well, whatcha gonna do.

The on-call doctor wasn’t, you know, completely useless. We were able to get a refill of Namine’s secondary inhaler. We still had some left from when Namine’s doctor cut her prescription, but it was expired, so we were able to resume that until we could get Namine in to an appointment.

Yesterday, a pulmonology nurse called Jessica. She was able to set up an appointment for Namine for today, and in the meantime, Namine’s pulmonology doctor – not an on-call doctor, but the doctor who’s followed Namine from early on – prescribed an anti-inflammatory steroid to supplement her two inhalers.

And today, at last, Jessica was able to get Namine in to see her pulmonologist. At last!

IMG_20140213_105938_402

All things considered, Namine didn’t sound too bad; not bad enough to admit her, anyway. They told us to continue with the inhalers and steroid, and just keep an eye on her. If her congestion didn’t go away by Monday, they’d likely start an antibiotic.

Namine was nervous about the appointment – as she is usually nervous about going to the hospital in general, but who can blame her? – but she was quite happy to see her doctor. She hadn’t seen Dr. Noe in some time, and a familiar face rarely fails to bring a smile.

IMG_20140213_105935_285

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related