Saturday, October 08, 2005

The Nearly-Deadly Hospital Visit

For the past two days, my third son has been in the hospital. This is his first hospitalization for asthma, though he has had a few Emergency Room visits. I'm exhausted, going to bed. My wife is at the hospital with him overnight again. He'll probably be in at least another full day, but we'll see how he is doing tomorrow.

What is interesting about all this actually ties to the on-going debated about the teaching of Intelligent Design versus Evolution in schools. One of the driving arguments from the evolution side of things is that evolution is the foundation of biology. Also, that intelligent design is not science.

Well, let me tell you, if modern biology is supposed to be science, I think the evolutionists had better some up with another argument. Because from what I've seen, first with my own diabetes, then with two children with severe food allergies and asthma...that doctors and hospitals in general really don't know much about anything.
The most basic of instructions can't seem to be followed. My son has several severe food allergies. Milk, in particular. Not an intolerance. A full-blown allergy, that ingestion can lead to death if not treated. So, what does the hospital do? They bring him a tray with pudding, milk, and chicken with an alfredo sauce. There was a cup of fruit. Nice dinner. And at lunch, they brought him a similar meal (with a tuna fish sandwich...and he has an egg allergy as well). They called down and ordered a replacement meal, mentioning the allergies. Two hours later, they finally brought him a new lunch. Milk, pudding, and tuna fish. Again. Thanks for trying to kill my son!


Then, we had three separate doctors give us three completely different and conflicting information about the state of our son. Then, they were blaming each other for having missed diagnosing his asthma sooner. Professionally, of course. But blaming, nonetheless.

Listen, I've studied science. I'm an engineer myself, and I think that modern biology is about the least scientific field there is. Every study, every new drug, and even some old ones, have gone through some scientific discourse only to either be contradicted, or found to kill people, etc.

Frankly, I'm annoyed by it all. Not the Intelligent Design versus Evolution debate. That will be on-going for quite some time. No, I'm annoyed that these doctors and hospital staff that don't seem to listen to their patients...or the parents of their parents. We are the ones witnessing this stuff day in and day out. We know a thing or two about what is going on. So, please, Mr. Doctor, sir, don't brush me off with some prepared answer from a medical book or even from past experience. My son is not a "textbook case". Listen to us, for once, and just maybe we could have kept him out of the hospital to begin with!

Of course, I'm tired and emotional about this at the moment. So, perhaps I'll delete this post in a few days. For now, I'm going to bed, and not afraid to let people know how annoying this all is.