My daughter (15 months) who is usually healthy as a horse mysteriously developed a fever of 103.6 all of a sudden and vomited so I went to the emeregency room. Well it didn’t take the doctor long at all to diagnose an ear infection in both ears. So he ordered some bloodwork.
Well the nurse came in to draw her blood with another nurse to help me hold her down. Of course at this point she was sick of having thermometers up her butt and swabs down her throat so she was screaming and squirming. The nurse spent forever trying to find a vein and clearly didn’t have a good one because she missed the vein and kept *digging* in her arm with the needle for several minutes. Now I justh ad my blood drawn the other day and the lab person missed at first and dug for about 15 seconds and it really hurt! I was just about to tell this nurse to stop digigng in her arm when she finally pulled the needle out. She decided to try the back of her hand and once again was unsuccessful and started digging again with the needle under her skin so finally I said “Stop it, that’s enough. You wouldn’t be digging like that with an adult because they’d ask you to stop.” Well the lady BLOWS UP at me and yells “I’M NOT DIGGING! SHE’S MOVING!” and I was like “Look, I understand it is very difficult to get a vein in a screamy squirmy baby but there is no excuse to torture her like that when you can’t get a vein.” Well she had an attitdue and was like “Fine, I’ll get the doctor in here and you can explain to him why you don’t want her to have bloodwork done. But don’t say I was digging because *I* don’t dig on children!” Then she left in a huff and I heard her out in the hall ranting to the doctor “Oh, I wasn’t even *touching* the needle and she said I was digging!” Well the doctor came in to explain how important the bloodwork was and I said “Listen, I want the bloodwork done but that lady had the needle in for several minutes digging under her skin. There’s no reason for that.” My little girl was already developing little bruises where the needles had been.
So anyway, they sent someone from the IV team and she was much gentler. She tried her other arm and after about 30 seconds of no vein took it out. THen she tried her foot and got a little bit of blood but again pulled the needle out after a reasonably short amount of time. THe little blood she got turned out to be enough to do the most important tests. Now my baby looks like a heroin addict but at least we know her bloodwork was alright.
While we were still there I heard that first nurse ranting to her coworkers about “the mom of the baby in room 18.” I wish I’d gotten her name to report her.
My question is: Do you think I was being unreasonable? I understand the importance of shots and bloodwork and i have always held her down and tried to comfort her but not interefere with shots and finger pricks. But this is the first time someone treated her with a complete disregard for her pain. Has anything like this happened to you?
Insomniacsdream517 – Thanks for your answer but I never yelled at her. I calmly told her to stop, and she immediately yelled at me.
Uhm Albert E, you just completely changed my story. Wtf?
