26/02/13 - First Visit With the Local Paediatrician

The paediatric outpaitent clinic at the Mersey Community Hospital were very quick to squeeze us in after receiving Doctor Naiker's referral. It was only a few days later that I got a phone call to ask us to come in.

When we arrived a lovely nurse who we'd seen a few times with Sophie's outpaitent treatment took us through and weighed and measured Ellie. She explained that we would usually be seeing the head paediatrician, Doctor Funk, but as she was currently in Antarctica we would see Doctor Hess who was filling in.

I was really happy that we would have the best for Ellie's care. Over the years we've dealt with many, many paediatricians at that hospital, all of them locums who are only focused on getting their placement over with as quick as they could. By being under Doctor Funk's care we were guarenteed to get a certain level of continuance, and the chance to get to know one doctor.

Doctor Hess, on the other hand, was exactly like all the other locums. He had no idea about the management of cleft lip and palate in Tasmania, and couldn't answer my questions at all. The main thing I wanted to know was whether we had a cleft co-ordinator in Tasmania like they do in Victoria. I don't think he even understood the question. The best I could work out was that any cleft-related issues would be seen by Doctor Funk, who could then reffer us off to the right specialist.

I wasn't there about the cleft anyway, but it was the only thing Doctor Hess wanted to look at. I eventually managed to get to the reflux, which he tried to brush off. He seems to be one of these doctors that don't believe in reflux. He tried to tell me the best thing to do would be to just wait for her to improve on her own. I pushed the matter further, pointing out that there was no way I could let her keep screaming for over five hours a night.

With a bit of mumbling and grumbling he gave in and gave us a prescription for zantac. He also started Ellie on an iron liquid, as her haemaglobin levels were still too low.

We made a follow up appointment for six weeks time, and went down to the pharmacy to collect Ellie's medication. The zantac made a difference straight away. And he wanted to leave her to grow out of it!