I will write this in about a half hour. Hmmm. Quite the half hour that was. I took a nap after I ate the rest of my chips and salsa with avocado and then made some phone calls from the bathtub. THen I had to get a new calling card. So I'm back now. Ready to work in a couple of minutes.
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My son and I had a multitude of problems after the delivery. First of all, I was sent home with a cathedar attached to my leg--what every new mother treasures. It was difficult enough that I only lost 20 of my 100 gained pounds. I had expected more. Now I was not only fat, I was jiggly fat.
I forgot to mention, because I got so fat in the last two months of pregnancy, I couldn't hardly walk anymore. I had been running before I was pregnant and then I walked 2 miles every day, back and forth from the bookstore, up until I was just too fat to walk, period. Everything hurt. I think this is how I ended up with a whole new shoe size--I was so fat my fett were flattened out.
So I had to have a home nurse come over to show me how to change my very own cathedar. I was holding a new baby, on a grotesquely fat belly, with one hand, and trying to make sure my pee bag didn't slide down my leg with the other. And, anyone knows those cathedars hurt. I had to lie a certain way to be careful and not tangle the wire or move things around.
My son, in the meantime, could only nurse, as I said, a little bit at a time and when he tried to suck, he would then cry out in pain. I took him to lactation consultants several times and they said the latch was right, and that both he and I were doing everything right, but he must have a headache and the pressure from sucking hurt his head.
Then, a yeast infection that had begun in the hospital, for breastfeeding it's called "thrush", afflicted both me and my son. I was told to put various ointments on it, and for my son, but it wouldn't go away.
I know my son and I are survivors because of not just what we went through at that hospital, but then trying to nurse. I ended up with cracked nipples besides and it wasn't just normal stuff. At least the doctors didn't think so--they said I had the worst case of it they'd ever seen. Maybe because I'm a fair, thin-skinned redhead they said. They gave me narcotics for that, and told me it was fine for breastfeeding as long as I waited awhile for it to leave my milk.
Maybe this isn't the place to brag about breastmilk, but I should have opened up my own dairy.
Dr. Butler looked at the milk in the bottle and asked if it was formula. I said no it wasn't. He looked again and said it didn't look most breastmilk. My milk was creamy and rich because I'd had such a good diet. Dr. Butler did some things later to try to force me off of breastfeeding and to give my son formula.
Okay, so, I was not just in a little bit of pain. I was in a LOT of pain. My entire pelvis hurt and my tailbone hurt so badly I couldn't sit at all. I was on painkillers so I couldn't tell how bad it was until I had weaned myself off of them, about 3 months later. I only took the painkillers occasionally, as needed, and mainly just tried to avoid them because of the baby. I did research about how long to wait for it to leave milk so it was safe. It doesn't really get into the milk like a lot of drugs do, even aspirin and OTCs, from what I read, so that made me feel better.
But my back hurt badly, my pelvis hurt, and my son wasn't okay either.
I was concerned and went to the clinic whenever I had concerns because he didn't seem to be doing okay. I also went back repeatedly for the thrush and it was never fixed. I finally told many lactation consultants in town and they said my Dr. should be giving my son and I antibiotics for a systemic yeast infection. They said there was no way topical ointments would work at that point, and that both my son and I had it systemic.
Dr. Butler refused to admit it was systemic. He just told me to start using a breast pump if it hurt. So I did, but that didn't get rid of the thrush for either me or my son. I was having sharp shooting pangs in my breasts and my son wasn't better off. The nurses observed him sucking and then breaking off and crying in pain.
About the time Dr. Butler refused to treat a systemic thrush infection, I got blotches all over my breasts, underneath and around the nipples. I didn't know what it was and had shown some people and they said to get it checked out. I had thought it was pigment changes from horomones. I wasn't diagnosed until several months later, for this, and it was "tinea versicolor". My son had it too, he had splotches on his forehead and on his groin in his diaper area. No one treated it but they noted the change in color and pattern. But by this time, Wenatchee medical people tried to cover up for eachother. After I was diagnosed, and I found out tinea is a form of yeast infection which can be a mutation of thrush (which made sense since it was only around my breasts and only on my son's diaper area when there was elimination of milk product), I did some research. I found out when a child has it it is extremely rare. It's unheard of unless the baby or child suffered from an impaired immune system.
When I blamed Dr. Butler for this, loudly, and not taking care of our systemic yeast infection, the other Dr. refused to admit my son also had the same thing I had and they refused to treat it. They didn't say what it was instead, they just refused treatment. They said the test was negative, but I watched them do the "scraping" and there were NO skin cells on the slide. Of course it was "negative". And that's what they wanted it to be.
I was claiming it was further evidence of negligence and malpractice and all the Wenatchee doctors came to Butlers defense. Because, in a small town, next time around, they would be the ones looking for a favor. And half of the Dr.'s there are there, not becuase of the "lovely scenery" but because they can't get jobs where there is actual competition. Many of the medical professionals were born and raised there besides.
I believe I asked for follow up on my son's choroid cysts and I was worried because my son had an uneven lump on his head, but the Dr.'s refused.
It started to get weird. The more I questioned Butler, the more his staff was encouraging me to see them AND go to ER too. I asked them once, "Why are you telling me to go to ER when you're my clinic?" and they'd say the doctor told them to tell me this. So I went to ER after going to the clinic, and ER looked at me and asked why in the world I was there if I had a PCP and went to the clinic. So I had to tell them Columbia Valley TOLD me to go there, and I didn't know why and I asked why but they just said to go. So ER directed me BACK to ER, after they made a phone call to Columbia Valley.
This happened more than once. Where I would call in about something I felt was smaller and could be handled by an on-call Dr. over the phone and instead they'd instruct me to go to ER and pressure me to do so. So it is true I went to ER a couple of times, about myself or my son's problems after delivery, for things which weren't as big of a deal, but it wasn't because this was my first choice. I tried to go to the clinic first.
One of the biggest things, the reason why I finally quit Butler's "services" was, well, two things. The biggest thing with my son was his vaccinations and also his constant jaundice. For me, my biggest problem was getting someone to listen to me when I told them my tailbone was broken and that I had severe pelvic pain, 3 months after childbirth, besides. So, since these are the slightly bigger things, I'm going to write about them in separate posts next.
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