{"id":518933,"date":"2022-11-30T17:06:23","date_gmt":"2022-11-30T14:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/inside-my-three-day-nightmare-at-a-childrens-er\/"},"modified":"2022-11-30T17:06:23","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T14:06:23","slug":"inside-my-three-day-nightmare-at-a-childrens-er","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/inside-my-three-day-nightmare-at-a-childrens-er\/","title":{"rendered":"#Inside my three-day nightmare at a children\u2019s ER"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a36e7bf151e2\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a36e7bf151e2\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/inside-my-three-day-nightmare-at-a-childrens-er\/#%E2%80%9CInside_my_three-day_nightmare_at_a_childrens_ER%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Inside my three-day nightmare at a children\u2019s ER&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CInside_my_three-day_nightmare_at_a_childrens_ER%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Inside my three-day nightmare at a children\u2019s ER&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n                                                                        <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My one-year-old son had already been sick for five days with a high fever when, on Sunday, November 20, I heard a familiar crackle from his lungs and saw his skin pulling at his neck and under his ribs as he struggled to breathe. These are sure signs of respiratory distress, that your kid is in danger.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I live in Plateau-Mont-Royal in Montreal with my partner, Willy, and our two boys, a three-year-old and a one-year-old. Earlier this year, my littlest guy was diagnosed with asthma. And this time, our emergency medication\u2014that miraculous blue puffer\u2014was not working.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Monday, at around 6:30 p.m., I took him to the emergency department at Montreal Children\u2019s Hospital. On both previous occasions I\u2019d taken him there for respiratory distress, we were triaged in a timely manner and were seen within hours.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>READ: State of Emergency: Inside Canada\u2019s ER crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This time, it was a different picture. At reception, the nurse looked at my little one for a couple of seconds and told us to sit in the waiting room, where we would get called for registration. Not even triage. Registration, which puts you in the queue for triage, which in turn puts you in the queue for a doctor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The waiting room was mobbed. There were no seats. Parents were sitting on the ground with sick kids in their arms. The room was filled with sick children, all crammed on top of each other\u2014coughing, puking, crying, moaning. To make room for us, a woman rearranged her family, seating a kid on her partner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After an hour and a half, we still hadn\u2019t been called to registration. Emergency rooms obviously don\u2019t work on a first-come, first-serve basis, for good reason, but I had a one-year-old with asthma who was struggling to breathe. This is usually a high-alert category. Did the nurse, with her seconds-long visual exam, know something I didn\u2019t? Other parents were also struggling with the delays, and, naturally, some asked staff for updates. While people were calm and polite, there was an overall air of disbelief\u2014glances passed from desperate parent to desperate parent, helpless.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Then there was an announcement over the intercom, scolding parents for asking staff about wait times\u2014and informing us that the average wait for all but the sickest children was now 20 hours. I thought, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We can\u2019t spend an entire day here. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So I took my sick kid and went home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>MORE:\u00a0I\u2019m a children\u2019s hospital doctor. Thanks to RSV, we may be in for a \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/trip-and-travel\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"10\" title=\"Trip &amp; Travel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">trip<\/a>ledemic\u2019 this winter.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Tuesday morning, at 8 a.m., right when the phone lines opened, we called to get him in at an emergency clinic at my health centre, and were assigned an afternoon <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ointment. We\u2019re lucky to have this option. It\u2019s only available to us because we have a family doctor; more than a million Quebecers do not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">My partner brought our little one to his appointment at 2:30 p.m. Over the last few days, we\u2019d watched his vital signs go up and down, the frightening retraction (pulling skin) come and go, the fever peak and dive. His temperature, at its highest, hit 41 degrees. His breathing went up to 60 breaths a minute. But he was relatively stable during the brief appointment, partly because we\u2019d given him meds shortly before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The doctor examined him, found that his vital signs were okay and that it was probably just a virus. He wrote us a referral to a semi-private clinic to get an X-ray the next day, and told us to bring the baby back to the ER if he got worse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That evening he got much worse: crying, retraction, flopping around, rapid breathing. His temperature spiked again. I knew the situation was dangerous. We took him to Jean-Talon Hospital, which according to my online research was operating at 67 per cent capacity, the lowest we could find at ERs across the city. I called first to see if they took kids, and we arrived at around 7 p.m.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This time, we got through triage and registration in good time. But in triage, we may have been victims of the same problem that we had at the doctor\u2019s appointment: the nurse was seeing a five-minute snapshot of my kid\u2019s state, and one that my partner and I had been managing with emergency asthma meds. It\u2019s possible that keeping my kid comfortable meant we weren\u2019t getting the proper diagnosis and treatment. But what\u2019s the alternative? Let him deteriorate?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We sat in a waiting room at Jean-Talon, in a little plastic chair, for five hours. The waiting room wasn\u2019t particularly crowded. I could see six examination rooms, but it looked as though only two were in use. Hardly any patients were being called in. And when the nurse did finally call out names, the people often weren\u2019t there. They had given up, I guess. Exhausted, I took stock of the situation. The faces surrounding me in the waiting room had been almost unchanged for five hours. We left after midnight, again, without seeing a doctor.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>RELATED: I\u2019m a veteran ER doctor. I can\u2019t believe what I\u2019m seeing.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Wednesday, I cancelled work to stay home with my little guy. At this point, he was in bad shape, just flopping and wailing, flopping and wailing. A friend drove us to the X-ray around 11 a.m. I called my health clinic to ask reception to prompt the doctor to check the results. The doctor called me back within five minutes. Pneumonia. My asthmatic child had pneumonia. Pneumonia that should have been diagnosed and treated when I presented at the ER two days before\u2014and which, in pre-pandemic times, probably would have been.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now we had a diagnosis, and only needed treatment. The doctor sent a prescription for antibiotics to our Pharmaprix and instructed me to start them that day. My partner and I were figuring out who\u2019d go to the pharmacy when a staff member called and they said they didn\u2019t have any antibiotics because of a shortage in Quebec. He said the pharmacy would contact the prescribing doctor to ask for an alternative. I asked how long it would take\u2014would it happen right now? He said, no, it wouldn\u2019t be im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>te\u2014the pharmacy had to contact the clinic, the doctor had to contact the pharmacy, and so on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In my arms, my kid was burning hot, alternating between crying and nursing, struggling to breathe. He wouldn\u2019t let me put him down for a second.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis is crazy,\u201d I said to the pharmacy employee, and tried to explain the urgency of the situation. He sneered and asked if I wanted to try to find the drug at another pharmacy. I was enraged. I\u2019m sure he was stressed because of the strain on the health-care system, but\u2014as I none-too-calmly informed him\u2014he was not as stressed as someone with a one-year-old who can\u2019t fucking breathe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After maybe 30 minutes<\/span><b>, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">someone from Pharmaprix called back. She\u2019d found a place that could make the prescription from raw materials. It was in Youville, about a 20-minute drive away. My partner left work, jumped in a Communauto and waited an hour for this out-of-the-way little pharmacy to mix our baby\u2019s meds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We were finally able to give our child the medication he needed. Following a three-day nightmare, including two attempts at going to the ER, a delayed life-threatening diagnosis and a mad scramble to find antibiotics, our one-year-old is slowly getting better.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But none of this should have happened. It wasn\u2019t a particularly complicated diagnosis or treatment\u2014but at every step we ran into walls, from outrageous waits to medication shortages to burned-out health workers. If this madness continues, children are going to die here this winter. I believe that. My asthmatic one-year-old had pneumonia and couldn\u2019t breathe properly\u2014let me emphasize, he couldn\u2019t breathe\u2014and we still couldn\u2019t get seen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of people are blaming long hospital wait times on an uptick in children\u2019s respiratory illness. That\u2019s a contributing factor, sure, but it\u2019s not the full story.\u00a0For the public system to improve, we need to invest in it. Instead of incentivizing people to become doctors and nurses, we\u2019re torturing the ones we have. Quebec and Canada need to address the structural problems that have caused this failure of essential social infrastructure\u2014a disaster that was waiting to happen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014As told to Mathew Silver<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/society\/health\/inside-my-three-day-nightmare-at-a-childrens-er\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Inside my three-day nightmare at a children\u2019s ER&#8221; My one-year-old son had already been sick for five days with a high fever when, on Sunday, November 20, I heard a familiar crackle from his lungs and saw his skin pulling at his neck and under his ribs as he struggled to breathe. These are sure&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[136368,73014,136497],"class_list":["post-518933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-er-crisis","tag-health-care","tag-pediatric-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}