update

The baby slept through the night for the first time 2 nights ago. She smiles all the time especially when we change her diaper. She's a gem.

Ryan has been potty trained now for 4 weeks! Life is so much better only changing one set up diapers. We learned that he's extremely allergic to oak pollen though as he's currently sporting two allergic shiners (those blue rings under the eyes).

social work

Fridays are the worst day to be at clinic b/c patients decide to come in at the last minute when we all just want to go home. I worked through lunch and failed to pump so that I wouldn't see my afternoon patients too late. Every patient seemed to need extra leg work done. One needed a CT that day, one hadn't been on meds for months b/c of expenses and now wanted me to find out if MEDICAID would pay for her lap band (likely a big N-O), one needed surgical clearance for an operation on Monday, another few needed every single 15 plus medications rewritten/printed, etc.

My most time consuming patient was a 30 day old child who I didn't mind being consumed with, but the mom made me extremely frustrated. The baby was a newly diagnosed with galactosemia meaning that she lacked the enzyme to breakdown food/formula w/ galactose/lactose. So she needed soy formula. Just getting this mother into the clinic was difficult. When my medical assistant called, she heard the 20 year old mother yell to another , "It's the F----ing doctor . . ."

RUDE

Right before the baby and mom came in I reviewed the electronic chart and found that there had already been numerous attempts to get this mom into the clinic. One note stated that mom said" What do you want?!!" and then hung up on the person calling without getting an appointment.

Anyway, when I saw the mom I found her to be actually nice and I was forgiving. The baby looked great and so I filled out a WIC form so that the mom could get the Soy formula for free. I also ordered labs on the baby which were normal except for the potassium which was a little high.

Later that day, the mother called stating the WIC office closed. My nurse told her to buy some soy formula at the store for the weekend but mom said she had no money and neither did any member in her family. I then called our neighborhood grocer HEB to ask if they'd gladly donate enough soy formula for the weekend and they did. (Thanks H-E-B!)

The other problem though was the potassium. The lab was mostly likely a false positive but I didn't want to chance that. Given that we were closed already I told the mom to bring the child to the nearby hosp ER to get it redrawn and let her know I'd call her over the weekend to follow up.

Saturday 11:30am while I'm at church choir practice I call and the mom tells me she's on her way. I call a few times later and one sister tells me she has no idea where the mom is. Then I call the home number and another sister says she doesn't know where the mom is.

Monday I call the same numbers morning and afternoon. On one afternoon call, one of the sisters tells me "call back" and abruptly hangs up on me. When I call back it would just ring. I also called the hosp ER and found out the baby was never seen. Stressed and frustrated I decided to call Child Protective Services (CPS) on the mom. Turns out she has 2 other children with open cases already!

Today, Tuesday, I talk to the supervisor at CPS who let me know that the sisters also gave her a hard time. She had sent a case worker there and found out that the family had been there the entire day that I was calling. And over the weekend, the mom decided she wanted to go to the lake instead. It wasn't until the caseworker accompanied the mom and child to the hospital that we were able to get the potassium redrawn and confirm that it was indeed NORMAL.

I'm relieved but I'm extremely frustrated. I pray this child will be okay given the parents and family she was born to.

I have tons of patients and it's not like this is the only one with this type of problem called APATHY!

Don't they care? HELP YOURSELVES PEOPLE! Why must the burden be on others all the time? I was happy to help obtaining the soy formula but now I realize this mom and her family are so used to feeding on people's sympathy they don't even TRY TO help themselves. And she's going to teach her children this LAZINESS.

These people need to learn about the immigrant mentality. It's the drive to leave one's country of origin behind to make it in another and do so through hard work. The U.S. is definitely a land of opportunity and while they do "take advantage" of it, they do so in the wrong way.