Observer wants Mumsnetters' views on whether parents over react to their child's health

i took ds to a and e once because he had bashed his foot and was very upset and couldn't put weight on it etc.

i was sent away after being told, it's just a bruise and he'll be fine. i spent a week trying to get hm to walk on it and then i got a letter from the hospital asking me to take him back in., it was broken.

they'd missed it on the x rays.poor little boy-no wonder he didn't want to walk on it.

Thanks. Mistakes do happen, we are all human at the end of the day, so go with your instincts, I agree hand on heart.

No, I don't think you did. You took her back and you listened to her. I think you did everything you could. I am always telling parents on here to get their children checked over for this very reason. Sometimes they don't listen.

Yes I still feel like crying today as I let her down.

That's terrible bitemylip.

And on a more serious note? Well yes I have one. My only sorrow is that I should have been more over dramatic and should have gone on my gut instinct after dd fell off a small garden swing. After a visit to A&E she had her arm put in a cast and then we were sent home. When I did make a fuss, 2 days later and another visit back to A&E, because she was in so much pain we got sent back home, then 2 weeks later, for follow up, I had to hear "to keep mummy happy will put your arm in a cast again for another 3 weeks, but there is nothing wrong" at which point they still hadn't figured out she had a dislocated elbow and was in constant pain. Thankfully the plaster technician listened to me and decided she wouldn't put it in a cast and could see how much pain dd was in. She insisted they looked at the xrays again and only then noticed it had been dislocated all that time. So 3 operations later and 10" scar and limited mobility and will never regain full rotation in her wrist. No not funny at all.

most of us reach for advice from somewhere
here
nhs direct
a book

Maybe Sharon Stone is so concerned because she herself suffered a stroke so young?
Give the woman a break!

I have called an ambulance for my dd- once when she had a febrile convulsion (about 11mo) and once when she started turning blue (9mo).

I think the 'over-reacting' thing is about confidence of the parent.
I was much more scared when she turned blue-she had fallen off the bed, stopped breathing, and was going blue. Turns out she was just 'shocked' and held her breath- I didn't know babies did that stuff! I was dialling 999 in a blind panic, with tears running down my face, though by the time they answered, she had begun the screaming.

With the convulsion, I knew what was happening, called 999 very calmly, whilst stripping her, and telling DH to wet a flannel to cool her down etc. It was all very rational- but I had read about febrile convulsions, and other friends with DC the same age had been through the experience 1 or 2 months before. It was a very different experience, and the ambulance crew re-assured us that we'd done the right thing calling them.

mis filed perhaps?

I took my six year old son to the dentist as he complained of toothache. The dentist checked him, did the x-rays and said "Your son has a wriggly tooth. Just keep wriggling it, it will be out in a day or two".

On the other hand I was taking him back and forth to various doctors for two years, as he wasnt eating much, he was often sick, had temperature, complained about tummy ache, etc. Every doctor said the same thing "He is just a fuzzy eater, he probably cant localize his pain very well, must be his throat" He got so ill and lethargic, he was admitted to hospital whilst on holiday in Poland, and diagnosed with severe iron deficient aenemia. I had asked the doctors to get his iron levels checked, and told they did not do this as the needle could be so distressing. LIke hell, as if the two years of his life where he was in pain and couldnt eat was not distressing?

Putting him on a high iron diet along with multivitamins with iron helped, though he still complained of tummyache, until he eventually he had an appendectomy. The surgeon said that some children had a very long and slow build-up to appendicitis.

My problem has not been taking him uneccesarily to the doctor, but getting the doctors to believe that my son was actually ill. Trust a mothers instinct.

It's in A&E.

you can tell i didnt read the thread before i posted.
where;s your sense of humour folks

Documentaries on rare or unpleasant diseases have a similar effect LittleBella.

Mind you I guess some lives are saved by knowing the symptoms of some illnesses (like arm pain and heart attacks) so it's potentially benign.

PMSL at pre eclampsia

We had one woman who was adamant her daughter had leukemia beause she had a bruise.

I bet Casualty has spawned a generation of paranoid parents

ds was taken to out of hours gp due to crying, he was about 2 weeks old
oh and he had some strange of rash, which was just the mark of my fingers holding him
sometimes his skin was blue and mottled, but that would be the cold house

Littlebella - I used to work at an out of hours GP surgery - it's not just A&E and the call logs for the day surgery were not much better.

Mind you it was always a laugh when someone would turn up after Casualty was on BBC1 on a Saturday night claiming their three year old had pre-eclampsia or leprosy!

LOL at michelin baby wasting away

Yes but you always get mad people in a&e

there's something about it that's conducive to madness

LittleBella - sadly I have seen this happen - it's not as rare as you think. I have stood in A&E and watched a mum check in five children because one has a paper cut and the other four have a cold.

I don't think it's parasitic for people of any age who are genuinely ill to seek medical help. I think it is the way they go about it that's askew.

If it's an emergency then yes you need emergency help but I know myself if I ever need to go to the docs and I'm not acutely ill, I make the appt for three days hence and most times cancel it the day before because I'm getting better anyway.

I once took a 5 month old ds to gp as he was off-colour and hadn't been feeding properly for days. GP glanced at his gorgeous michelin man like rolls of baby fat...and said "hmmm, he's wasting away isn't he?" and winked.

I do like my gp - he has a very reassuring manner!

I don't know of any parent who demands that little Johnny's tummy ache gets dealt with before that bloke who is having a heart attack over there.

Honestly, when has that happened? It is part of that exaggerated narrative of patients who take the piss. Because a few nutters are utterly unreasonable, a whole bunch of people are being sent messages that their wish to use the medical service is unreasonable and somehow parasitic.

I just really object to it, it is extremely reactionary. And I speak as someone who (touch wood) hasn't been near a doctor for at least 3 years. I want as little as possible to do with them and will avoid them unless I think it's absolutely necessary to seek them out.

My 14 month old ds was playing with my wedding ring. Ten minutes later it was nowhere to be seen. I turned the whole room upside down before concluding that he must have swallowed it.

Took him to casualty, cue lots of grinning from receptionist and triage nurse. When the doctor saw him she said they wouldn't x-ray children that young, if they could help it. She explained that they had a new mini-metal detector, which could scan his tummy and see if the ring was inside. They scanned him over his clothes, which kept beeping, and after discarding metal belt loops and trousers (metal buttons) it continued to beep over his nappy. On closer inspection we found my ring inside his nappy - he'd dropped it down the back of his neck.

The doctor and nurses were wetting themselves. Ds turned into a right kleptomaniac after that, I kept finding hair bobbles, jigsaw pieces and all sorts in his nappy, all dropped down the back of his neck!

I think there's an education and a parental support problem in the UK. Parents tend to over react sometimes when they have not experienced an illness before or have seen something in the media because alot don't have the eduation to tell them how to notice signs of when their child has a mild illness, when to take them to the GP and when to get immediate medical help. We are handed our children, sent out of the hospital and that's it.
I used to be a student paeds nurse and have seen parents bring their child into A&E because they didn't believe their GP's diagnosis. We didn't mind though, we'd rather spend time looking at a healthy child then to have a child brought in seriously ill because it's parents didn't think it was worth bringing it in or taking it to the doctors. Parents are also given conflicting advice from the media and health professionals which does make them unsure of what they are doing which does not help. The paraetamol advice reciently given to parents is a good example. It leaves parents hesitant on giving their child mediation because of the risk of their child developing asthma. In a month time there will be something else.

Parents often don't have anyone to turn to when their child is ill. Health visitors no longer offer support to parents as they are too busy and too few. The support network that a mother had twenty years ago, granny not far away, is now rare as extended families live further away from each other. I'm not surprised parents over react when we are being bombarded with reports of children dying beause of this or that illness. Knowledge is a good thing but parents need to be told of all of the facts and given the eduation and support to be able to judge whether their child needs medial care or not.

LittleBella - I bet I could outdo you on the bad tempered front, it's my birthday and I have no cake nor balloons

BTW the docs who say 'we'd rather you come in than....' are trained to say that - when you leave they roll their eyes and write PFB on your kid's notes!