When I was trying to get pregnant with Brooke, my friend, Laura, made me promise to quit Googling or WebMDing (I am taking artistic license to make these verbs) physical conditions. It was becoming an unhealthy habit to say the very least. Thankfully, I managed to curb my addiction to random and useless self-diagnosis... Yep, I left that up to the professionals who had us spend thousands and thousands of dollars to bypass our 99.9% infertility rate and help us conceive. (We underwent months of cycle-charting, pill-taking, failed IUIs, hormone protocols--shots!!, and failed IVF, only to conceive Brooke naturally after we were told it was impossible. In yo' faces doctors!! *with all due respect, of course*)
Wow, that was the longest lead in ever... Anyway, today WebMD reared its ugly head again, only this time, I was not the sole perpetrator. Here's what happened: Brooke has, in the past few weeks, begun to "watch" Baby Einstein developmental DVDs for about three point five minutes at a time. She looked so cute this morning, propped against a "husband" pillow, cuddling her "ni-night" blankey, watching her DVD like a big girl. So cute, in fact, that my mom--Brooke's "BeeBee"--had to take her picture. The resulting image on the iPhone showed a white reflection on Brooke's right pupil.
Mass hysteria ensued, as my mom recalled reading an article on WebMD about infantile retinal blastoma (cancer of the retina), the main symptom of which is this weird reaction to flash photography, as the light bounces off the irregularity in the inner eye. (The fact that my mom remembered this random medical factoid was in itself disconcerting, since she can rarely recall what she ate the previous meal...or what she was going to say when she decided to call...etcetera.) So, we did what any loving guardian with internet access would do: we Googled the heck out of it.
A number of frighteningly serious, scholarly medical articles confirmed her concerns. Retinal blastoma is usually diagnosed in children under the age of 2 (Brooke is 16 months), it will cause a white distortion on photographs where red-eye is often an issue, and it is often accompanied by fever (Brooke's had a bit of a fever for a few days). So, I began to call every local eye doctor listed in the phone book; since it is Saturday, however, few were in. Of those offices that were open, some had no doctor on duty, some were double-booked, some didn't see patients as young as Brooke... Finally, I found a place with a pediatric specialist in the office: he told us to take Brooke straight to the emergency room.
I had it together enough to pack books, diapers, a drink, and some snacks for Brooke, and off we went to the ER. Upon arrival, I realized that I had forgotten my purse--which obviously contains my wallet and insurance cards. We had to double-back home to collect that. Upon our second arrival to the ER, we were checked in and taken directly to an exam room. Thank Goodness, right?
I was telling my mom how lucky we were to be seen so quickly and joked about how the one time when I was prepared for the long haul was the one time that it wasn't going to be a torturous wait. Guess again. Almost three hours later (three hours trapped in a 10 x 10 room filled with medical equipment and a hospital bed and a germy, germy floor...with Brooke and some books and snacks), a CRNP--not an MD--who had an immediately dislikeable nature came in. By this point, Brooke was beyond control...as in, I could barely hold on to her, let alone subdue her and restrain her in such a way that a person could peer intelligibly into her pupils with a minute flashlight.
He performed an eye exam that my 7-year-old could have come up with and basically disregarded our photograph, our WebMD information, and our referral from the pediatric eye doctor. From his 30-second exam on my highly uncooperative toddler, he was convinced that she was fine...and seemingly from his tone and commentary, that we (her guardians) were completely nutters. "So there was no trauma to the eye? And, she hasn't been presenting any symptoms?" he said. "And you brought her to the ER because she took a bad photo?" he implied very clearly without saying a word. Needless to say, our protests about our online searches made us seem even nuttier...as for our pleading at him to look at the photo? Well, we seemed completely wackadoo in the face of his resolute scientific physical proof burden. Even we could tell that we seemed loco.
All we managed to successfully impart--that seemed to matter a whit to him--was that a doctor had told us to bring her directly to the ER. But apparently he was an optometrist and not an ophthalmologist, so we were still screwed. Nevertheless, he grudgingly agreed to call the place to speak to the "doctor" to find out what had had him concerned enough to send us to the hospital. It seemed that he was doing it because we were crazy, and he was maybe a teensie bit scared of us... Too bad the office was now closed. Saturday!!
Crazy BeeBee went on the warpath. She wanted to break every one of our non-doctors sausage-like fingers off (and this was an exact quote). So, she marched right up to non-doctor-sausage-fingers' desk, and she told him to look up retinal blastoma for himself. He explained to her in his soothing, calming, patient voice reserved for crazy people in the ER that he had very sophisticated software for cross-referencing systems, and she told him to shove his system up his behind and GOOGLE IT! (Only in nicer language, I'm guessing. I wasn't there. I was in our exam cage trying to subdue our irate little patient.) Now definitely very afraid of BeeBee, he did indeed Google our condition. He was suitably concerned by it that he called the on-call ophthalmologist. (All along there was an on-call ophthalmologist, yes.) Thank you very much.
After consulting with the on-call doctor and doing some more examination, he did not think that the symptoms matched retinal blastoma THANKFULLY! He thanked us for giving him the opportunity to learn something new and encouraged us to get a second opinion from an expert on Monday. And, so, we were discharged. We were extremely relieved, and we appreciated that he finally took the time to listen to what we had to say instead of dismissing us willy-nilly, but we still decided that he was not our favorite non-doctor. And his fingers really did look sausage-y.
So, chalk one up for WebMD.
Kind of.
But just one.
**Update: I am feeling guilty about calling our ER medical professional a "non-doctor" today. I don't want to be mean or catty, I suppose I was just a little overly emotional at the time of writing this, and I guess my Mama Bear claws came out a little. Or a lot. However, upon further investigation, it is now clear that Mister Sausage-Fingers was actually a resident CRNP (certified registered nurse practitioner). Not only, therefore, is he not an M.D., he is still a resident C.R.N.P. He called himself "Dr. _________." Is that kosher? Is a CRNP to be referred to as "Dr. __________?" Can anyone elucidate?
**Second update: Again, I don't mean to disrespect Mr. Sausage-Fingers. Truly. Even if he is only a resident CRNP. He has a lot more education (specifically in the medical specialty) than I do. I am actually quite jealous of his level of expertise. I just really didn't enjoy his company in the ER yesterday...especially if he was calling himself "Doctor" without justification. Because that would just be ever-so irksome.
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