Funny that the last few sentences in my Aug. 6th post were:

“Call me crazy, but moments like this make me so glad to have a boy. I love the rough and tumble, super energetic, Danger is his middle name personality! (Remind me of this when we’re on our way to the ER someday.)”

It didn’t even take a month.

The EVIL splint
Wearing our own splints for support.
Sporting his new blue cast

Charlie broke his foot – and, let me tell you, it was a nightmare. (I plan on sharing the 2 complaint letters that I am sending to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta AND Gwinnett Medical Center once I finish them.) Two Saturdays ago, (Aug. 29th), Charlie jumped off one of the climbing things at a playground and it was obvious that he’d seriously hurt his foot. We rushed to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Luckily, it was a Saturday right after school started, so our wait was over 5 hours long. (Sorry, I’ll try to keep the bitterness down to a minimum.) CHoA put a splint on Charlie’s foot incorrectly – they decided that Charlie didn’t need to have any padding between his foot and the hard plaster stabilizing it! This was after the radiologist didn’t think he had any fractures but didn’t want to take any chances. Three excruciatingly long days and nights later, we find out from an orthopedist that Charlie has THREE fractures!!! But that’s not the worst of it. Because Charlie’s splint was put on improperly, he developed an ulcer that covered his entire heel! His orthopedist said that those ulcers are more painful than a fracture.

From Saturday morning when he broke his foot until Tuesday morning when he got a cast, Charlie writhed and cried in pain. No being still, no sleep. No eating either. It was so unlike him that we knew he was really suffering. It was not a pleasant experience to say the least.

The day before Charlie went to the ortho and after crying nonstop for 4 hours, I lost my mind and took him to the ER at Gwinnett Medical Center. I couldn’t stand to see him hurting so much and couldn’t take it anymore myself, so I thought maybe the ER could do something – anything – until his orthopedic appointment the next day. I was willing to go to a witch doctor at that point.

Want to know what they did? They. Turned. Me. Away. A front desk dude and a nurse dude told me that the ER could do nothing more than what CHoA had done. Really. I still can’t believe that they turned away a mother and son in tears because of her son’s pain and they weren’t willing to even look at his foot. Only to find out 24 hours later that if they’d taken his splint off, they would have found the ulcer and could have provided some kind of relief before his orthopedist appointment the next day.

When I found out that we’d been provided with poor healthcare from two places that caused Charlie unnecessary suffering, I wanted someone’s head was seeing red. I still am, sometimes! Complaint letters don’t even skim the surface but at least someone at both places will hear about it.

And to think that we are American citizens with health insurance that are able to pay our medical bills. I can’t imagine what is to come once it’s “free”.

Filed under: Family