Tag Archives: Doctor

THIS Is The Real Reason That Mums Don’t Take Showers

Concussion. That’s why. Your two-year-old daughter’s potential concussion. Fml.

‘Twas a morning that was going well, last Tuesday.

Ass Monkey left for work early, the kids and I had brekkie, cleaned up and got back upstairs to get dressed without any major upsets.

The calm in itself should have been warning enough that something disastrous was about to happen.

With both of my little ones dressed and the ole ‘Hands, face and teeth’ routine complete, I ushered them to my room and stuck the TV on while I had my own shower.

“Don’t jump on the bed” I warned. We had gotten a new base for the bed the previous week and the kids had been enjoying testing it’s durability by bouncing on it, off it, over it and all around it.

“Jacob, you are the Chief of Not Bouncing On The Bed until mammy gets back. I’ll be two minutes. Watch Diego”.

He wasn’t really convincing me that he was listening so I chucked out my instructions another 17 times before leaving for the bathroom.

“Don’t jump on the bed. Don’t jump on the bed. Don’t jump on the bed”.

I was in the shower all of 30 seconds when Jacob came in, crying.

They had been jumping on the bed, he said, and had bashed heads.

He looked so scared that I ran, soaking and in my nip, to my room where Eva was crying that kind of a cry where you know something has gone really wrong.

She’s normally a tough little thing but on that Tuesday morning, she wouldn’t stop crying and wouldn’t let me put her down either. It was some job trying to get the suds off and get myself dressed.

On the way back from dropping Jacob to school Eva vomited all over herself in the back of the car so I did an instant detour to the doctor’s surgery. Bang on the head + vomit = not a great situation.

Our local GP was great – he saw her immediately and said she had a mild concussion, to administer Calpol and Nuerofen for the pain in her head and to monitor her for the next couple of days.

Ass Monkey and I got zero sleep that night – between just being worried about her generally (I slept beside her in her bed) and her own inability to sleep (concussion can throw out a sleep pattern for a few days), it was one long night.

She seemed pretty ok the next day and went to preschool who said she was fine aside from a slight spike in temperature. She had also taken a little nap and we put that all down to the lack of sleep the night before.

That evening we were out shopping for a shirt and tie for my dad for the wedding and went for a bite to eat afterwards. Our childminder called just towards the end of the meal; Eva had thrown up twice.

We were in the city centre so zoomed back to North County Dublin to grab her and take her to Temple Street.

The staff in the hospital are absolutely fantastic and we discovered while we were there that not only did Eva have the concussion from the day before but also has a urinary tract infection (UTI) which was the cause of the temperatures and the vomiting.

That kid was having a SHIT week.

We all got home and into bed at around 5 am armed with a dose of antibiotics and pain killers and had another couple of rough days (and nights!) after that where her temperature still spiked every few hours.

She’s back to herself as of around Monday or Tuesday this week and I’m only short of putting a helmet on the kid to keep her little head safe.

I haven’t had a shower without either Alan being around to keep an eye on them or with her having a nap since. That’s the end of that!

(My advice if your kid bumps their head? Take absolutely no chances – take them to the doc straight away and into hospital if you suspect anything is awry).

**Read More On The Signs Of Concussion On The HSE Website**

 

A Model Vagina

We moved house last year and haven’t had great luck with finding a new family GP. The first one we tried out was a bit silly – the doctor for my antenatal care, plus those first couple of new baby visits was located up not one, but two very narrow flights of stairs. Whatever about dragging my heavily pregnant and dementedly overdue ass up there, expecting a new mum to haul her broken lady bits AND the baby in the wretched car seat (what is the situation with them being made of lead?) is criminal.

Then, of course, there was the time they charged me €90 for a fifteen-minute visit with Eva because I also asked them to sneak a peek at a rash on the back of Jacob’s knee. The reluctant toddler probably let them take a look at it for all of a second – ok, maybe two seconds, but did it warrant charging this new mother an extra €45? It did in its hoop.

So we moved to GP Number Two and I had it on good advice that this one was very family-friendly, had an open door, no-appointment-necessary policy and that they used their discretionary fee-charging powers with caution. I said ‘Brava! Sign us up’.

Our first visit was for one of Eva’s vaccinations. It went fine; I asked the nice lady doctor if she would check Eva’s chest while we were there as she’d had a constant cough, and she obliged. We left reassured that nothing sinister was at work.

Our second visit was for Eva’s next vaccination. Again, all fine, and when I brought up the cough (which was still lingering months later), I had a prescription for a baby-adapted inhaler somewhat flung at me. Mmmm…sure I let it go. Maybe she was stressed, maybe someone puked directly onto her shoes that morning just as she was leaving the house, you know?

I had one final question for Lady Doctor, since I was there and all, so I chucked it in.

‘And one last thing’ I ventured.

‘Did you want to have a consultation?’ Lady Doctor snapped.

‘I, er…what?’

‘I mean, I am happy to do Eva’s vaccinations and everything, but if you need a consultation, I will book you in.’

Now, I don’t know about you, but if I’m about to have a confrontation with someone who is in a position of ‘higher authority’ or ‘greater status’ than I, I like to try to look the part. I like to look like I can match them, that I can whip out some jargon from my legal studies diploma or my years in customer service and deliver it with force and a full face of make up. Unfortunately, on THIS day, I was wearing ‘that’ tracksuit (you know the one), hadn’t a scrap of make up on and hadn’t slept in…what is it now, oh yeah, three years.

Anyway, you get it. She was in head-to-toe professional garb and was giving me grief, and I looked like an extra from Shameless. But on this day, I dunno, I wasn’t really having it.

‘Oh I’m sorry’ I responded. ‘I actually just had a question but did you want me to pay you in advance for it?’ (I know, eek!)

Strangely enough, Doctor Lady was taken aback enough to backtrack a bit, and started mumbling and stuttering that I should go ahead and ask her that question.

No, no, I protested, getting my fleece on (it goes perfect with the tracksuit and is has the added benefit of being baby-stain-removal-friendly), I’d go back out to reception and make an appointment and schedule my question in.

No, no, no, she insisted, go on.

‘I was just going to ask your advice on the Mirena coil?’ I shrugged. ‘But it’s grand, another time’.

I was halfway out the open door, car seat on one dead arm, wailing just-vaccinated-baby in it, trying to keep my dignity whilst noticing that my tracksuit bottoms had what looked like a piece of encrusted Rusk stuck to the hem.

‘The coil!’ she trilled, ‘of course, no problem’. And, as if by magic, she whipped out a cardboard cutout vagina and started spewing out all sorts of information on how the coil is inserted etc. I couldn’t tell you a word of what she said, because I was genuinely trying to suppress my giggles.

I would nearly have changed doc a third time, but for that panicked cardboard-cutout-vagina display alone….I totally forgive her. What a comeback ;o)

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***This article first appeared on the HerFamily.ie Website***

***Going on hols this year? Bringing the kids? ARE YOU SURE? Read THIS first!!***