I suspect I am being unreasonable and yes I know GPs are overworked and it's the run up to Christmas etc etc but this appointment has left a sour taste in my mouth and I'm not sure why.
I took my daughter to the GP yesterday because I suspect she has a mild urine infection. She is 2.5 and still wears nappies and her wet nappies have been quite smelly for the last few days. I have been extra meticulous and making sure she is properly clean and she has a bath every other night and an "important areas" wash on the off nights so it seemed likely the smell was actually urine rather than something external. Then yesterday morning she said "Mummy done a wee" and had a pained expression on her face so I said "is your wee hurting you?" And she said yes. So I made an appointment with the GP and then spent the whole bloody morning trying to get her to sit on the potty to get a sample and sent DH to get a pot from the doctor's.
When we got there he was very abrupt and said "here again are we?" I just smiled and said yes and he rolled his eyes a bit. I said I thought DD had a UTI and he said "well UTIs are actually very rare in children this age and they are something we take very seriously. Then he asked why I thought she had one and I gave him the above info. He sighed and said well I can't just treat blindly! We'll need a sample (in a manner than suggested I was an idiot or just desperate for antibiotics). I then gave him the sample I had brought and he sighed again and said well this will have to go off to the lab, it will take a few days. His manner was as though I was a massive time-waster. I said that she had had a UTI before and DH had brought her and they had just dipped her wee there and then, but he said they'd have to send it off for proper tests.
So as not to drip feed, my daughter has been to the GP a fair bit but no more than other toddlers I know! She had thrush under her arm recently which had to be treated with canesten but was initially misdiagnosed so it took a while to get the right treatment. She has had the odd bug - she had croup as a young baby and has had a chest infection since then. She broke her leg a year ago (she sat on DH's lap on a slide and her leg got caught underneath him) which was awful and we felt terrible about it but it was clearly an accident.
I was just surprised by his suggestion that we were there all the time and that I was time wasting. I am a nurse so only take my kids when there is something I can't deal with myself and I don't feel like my children are ill more than other children their age. Also I'm not sure what he meant by taking the UTI very seriously in children her age. I can't explain why but it really felt like an admonishment. She is always clean, drinks plenty and only water or milk, eats a good healthy diet, gets plenty of sleep. I'm not sure what more I should be doing to avoid illness! So am I being unreasonable or over sensitive or was this guy a bit off? Congrats if you made it this far - sorry for the novel!