The New Nurse....

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So I take Noah and Nathan to their Pediatrician ...  mind you, they have a different doctor than the rest of us because of their insurance.   Anyway - their Ped's normal nurse was very pregnant last time we saw her, and she wasn't there.  It was some new girl.  So we get there at 3 for a 3:15 appointments, we sign in and wait to be called.

No one is up there....

No...... the receptionist is way too busy talking personal life with one of the nurses .....

This goes on and on and on ...  at 3:10 some guy walks in and gets checked in right away ....

At 3:15 a couple of ladies walk in and sign in ...  the receptionist makes some joke about them being right on time....

Another minute passes by as she continues to talk personal life with the other receptionist who is also doing nothing (well she might be doing something on her computer .... )

Another minute or so passes ...   finally we get called up to the window to check in at 3:18 ...  REALLY?

So I get them checked in - initial this and this and go sit down. 

I go sit back down with the boys ...   the door finally opens and there stands this new nurse ...  apparently the normal nurse is on maternity leave?

"Nathan"  She says ...

So I get up - start gathering the jackets and my bag ...  and Noah goes "Should I come too?"  ... "Ah, yeah Noah."  So he gets his stuff and follows.

We get behind the door to their little weigh in station and the nurse says "Nathan can you please take off your shoes" and I notice she's looking at Noah.  I'm still trying to juggle stuff and put stuff down.  She repeats herself, looking straight at Noah....  So I said, "That's not Nathan," I point to Nathan now that I got the stuff out of my hands...  "That's Nathan," so I grab him and start to help him take off his shoes.

"This is for a five year old?" she says ....  Nathan looks two and Noah looks like he's six or seven... I can see where the confusion takes place ...

"Yes," I said.  "He is five."

She looks really confused, looks at Noah again.

"I'm ten!" Noah tosses in.

"Oh," she says ...  obviously still confused.

Lesson One:  DO NOT ASSUME!!!  It's awful simple to ask "which one is" when parents come in with more than one child - unless one is obviously a baby and the other is older....

Nate hops up on the scale.  26 lbs...  and he was 37 inches (I think) 

After Nathan gets weighted and measured ...  I said, "I have Noah too, they both have DR appt with DR A."

"huh?"

"Noah has an appointment with Dr. A. too."

"Oh, what's his name?"

"Noah."  Didn't I just say that?

She disappears and comes back with his chart.  Tells him to take off his shoes.... he's 56lbs ...  "DO I WEIGH THE SAME AS NATHAN" he trembles.

"No, you weigh more," I say.  He's relieved.  Silly boy.

We get back into the room. 

She goes through vitals and all that for both kids... asks me a million questions .... then leaves.

I bring out Nate's blue bird and green piggy so they can play Angry Birds while waiting.

15 minutes later ....  she comes back in and takes Noah's blood pressure again and leaves...

They are bored playing Angry Birds, not to mention - the "sound" box for the blue bird got broke there...  lovely - Nathan is wigging out ...

They play Doctor for awhile, I think I got 500 shots between the two of them....  every one of them was administered with great care, while I was reading, I didn't feel a thing.

5 minutes later .... knock on the door - I'm thinking it's the DR ....  nope, it's the chatty Cathy receptionist who decided she needed to go pen hunting and comes in and steals all the pens from the room claiming "there's so many in here" and "I don't need many" but then I hear her knocking on another exam room when she leaves ours....

 2 minutes later the nurse comes in and hands me some papers "Oh these are for you, are you done with those?" pointing to the ones the desk had given me.  "Yes" I said and handed it to her... ... walks out. I notice there are two more pens under where I had put the clipboard... 

Kids are still bored.... we try to sing Old McDonald Had A Farm ...  but the only thing he had on the farm was a DINOSAUR and who knew Old McDonald lived on the island of Jurassic Park???

The kids then proceeded to be dinosaurs.  Noah was a Velociraptor and Nathan was a Triceratops... how do I know?  Noah announced it and Nathan was a series of questions and knowing his favorite dinosaurs...  plus he kept head butting Noah...  LOL...  impaling him with the three horns I assume. 

10-15 minutes later .... Knock ...  DR is finally here....

"I'm sorry about the wait but there is a lot to review for your kids.... "

"Nah," I counter.  "Not my kids.  Couldn't be my kids."

She laughs.

She's looking at the kids - who are still pretending to be dinosaurs....  I say "they are dinosaurs"

"I see that," she says.

So it's suppose to be a well-child check for Nathan and Noah ... and I told her that I wanted to talk to her about Nathan's cough because it's concerning me.  I tell her about it and she brought up whooping cough - which is something Dennis and I thought it might be.  If he has it, I think it's mild.  But it's still concerning.  She wanted to give him a little while to see if he gets over it over the weekend.  He has an appointment for his well child check up now on Tuesday - because they can't seem to do more than one issue at a time.   His lungs are clear - etc and so on.  So she wanted to wait - because the test isn't pleasant...  We talked about how I originally thought it was Nathan's asthma so I had been given him nebbies and how I even thought about giving him some of Kaedyn's prednisone ....  but I didn't.  I couldn't remember the dose of his albuteral cartridges .. she said if it was under 2.5 to double up (it's 2.5) ...  so I'll wait to see if she still wants use to double up or just stick with one.

When the DR came in ....  Nathan was okay - when she went to examine him - he flipped out and ran into the corner behind the exam table and was screaming - I had to pull him out.  Once the exam was over and I put him on the floor - he ran off and hid under a chair - sometimes screaming - until the appointment was over, this isn't like him .... at all.  :( 

Nathan's coughing fit while playing Wii Tennis with Kaedyn (long video, the tennis is funny, coughing fit happens at about 1:20 in with some little coughs, has a bigger one at 2:40 and again at 3:05 ...  but these are mild compared to a lot he's had)
 
Nathan's coughing fit this morning (short video - all about his coughing, I didn't catch most of it, this is the tail end, there was gagging involved in this one
...)


Then she moves onto Noah ....  everything looks good other than he is having issues getting himself clean (from the bathroom) ...  :::sigh:::    She brought up follow ups we're suppose to have, two of which we already did ... one I need to schedule ...  When she checked his back for scoliosis - it was funny - she got her scolimeter ... and kept taking measurements over and over and said "I think he's just not standing straight or something.  I told her "His left leg is longer than his right, so yeah, he can't help it."  LOL... 

She leaves but pops back in saying that Noah's blood pressure had been high ... that the systolic number was high ... normal is lower than 111 ... and his was 116 (one of the times) ...  the nurse came back in and took it again and it was normal.   Noah gets super anxious for appointments - so I'm not surprised I guess.

The nurse prints off the papers from the appointments (appointment summaries) and  then says goodbye...

So we get jackets on and clean up our stuff...  and walk out the door to the exam room....

... in the hallway after we round the corner I hear "Oh hey - wait" and so I'm directing the kids back towards our room we had been in - as I'm rounding the corner with the kids I hears "Wait Nathan's Mom" ...  and she's standing at the other end of the short hallway ...  so she says "hang on" and she's searching for something.  She comes back with a pulse ox monitor ..  Nathan puts his finger in and after a little while it starts going - his oxygen is only at 85% ... after awhile of it staying there she takes it off and starts doing it again ....

Then this other nurse comes along - she's probably captivated with Nathan's adorableness ... and she stops, literally hovering over him ...

I'm thinking ....  Lady, this kid has autism, he doesn't LIKE to be hovered over unless it's one of the family ....  I'm expecting him to start curling up into his ball or come closer to me OR start screaming, but he's good - he doesn't move.... He stands there with his finger in the thing.   The other nurse says "Sometimes it helps if you put two fingers in there" but then it starts up again ...  this time his ox starts out at 93% then dances around 97-96% ...  she took the 97% ...

THEN we left....   thankful that was all over.  We got there at 8 and left at 10:10 ....... yep, two hours and ten minutes.......

I get to go back next week  on Tuesday ....... YAY!!