Presley's first Endo appointment

[Mymommymommy]

Presley's FIRST Endo appointment was at 11:15am so I got everything ready to go, a lunch, snack , juice, insulin, glutose gel, and glucose tablets, in addition to normal baby stuff like dipers and wipies. sippie cups. ect. So i left good an early anticipating traffic in Del Mar. So i was outta the house at 9:45.. and hr and 15 min should be good. So i don't know WHY it is, that when ever you leave with plenty of time for traffic there is NONE!! well, very little at least. so I was there at 10:30 not bad,.... not bad. So i hung out for a bit while i waited for my mom to get there. As i'm sitting on a bench outside the building watching the kids play i notice another girl who was probably 10 with a medical ID bracelet and a small purple back. I could tell she was a Diabetic and that the little bag was probably some of her supplies. Thats when i reached down and thought to myself..."where's her little bag with her snacks and stuff??" OH NO I FORGOT IT?!?!?! what a BAD mother.. you leave her LUNCH,. her SNACKS and yes her INSULIN at home!! I was SO mad and well.... a little stressed out.
Once my mom got there we went up to check in. I gave her name and they said "her appointment is at 1" WHAT?!?! :eek: I looked at the lady and told her that no indeed my appointment was at 11:15, that when i made the appointment I was told it was double booked, and that if anything changed I would be given a call. Which OBVIOUSLY didn't happen. The lady insisted that the appointment WAS at 1 and always had been. I looked at her and said "what am i suppose to do till 1?" she said real smug... "get eat lunch....???" :mad: i was SO mad! This did not make a good first impression. I mean common.. you think my appointment was at 1 and i just DECIDED that no.. i would rather show up at 11:15?? PLEASE!
So my mom, the girls and I walked to the cafeteria for some lunch. Before we got our lunch i had to check her Blood Sugar. I said to myself "dont be high.. dont be high" (because then she would need a shot.. that of which i didnt have" and of COURSE it was high.. oh well? what could i do? so after we ate.. i made her walk for some exercise.
We went in for take two and checked in again. Once we were called back they did the weighing and measured her. She's back up to 30 pounds. (when she went into the hospital she lost 5) Then we got into our room and waited for the Dr.
Once he came into the room he jumped right into how he thinks that her head is to big. He said that she was born with a normal size head, and that because it's so large that he wants her to have an MRI done. Then he talks about how she's a little heavy.. and that even tho she is tall.. she still weighs more than kids her age at that hight. WHATEVER! He talked very little about her diabetes. So little that I cant even tell you what he said.. because nothing seemed to be done or answered. He did take her morning carbs down to 20 and took her morning insulin down. (because of her weight)
Then he was paged and left the room, we waited probably 30 more min. i was SO mad at this point i think steam was coming out of my ears for reals :mad:! I had a list of questions i still didn't get to talk about.. and by this time it's already 2:15ish. he comes in and appologizes then talks more about.. i don't know what. Then i unleashed on him how i had been there since 10:30 and his office was rude to me. I feel like i'm being rushed and i dont understand what's going on with my daughter. I actually cried. I was so upset :(. He gave me a hug and told me he would talk to his staff about what had happened earlier, and that he wasn't happy that, that happened to me.
Then I gave him my list of questions. which he did answer SOME of them. He did tell me that these appointments were not really the kind of appointments where he could sit and talk to us for an hr. Anyways.. needless to say getting out of there at 3 O'CLOCK.. made my day a VERY BAD DAY. I'm not impressed with her dr's office, and as for the Dr himself i'm not sure yet. I think he was truely upset that I was upset. and Told me that next time i have a list of questions to bring them to his attention in the begininng that way he'll address those first instead of talking about things i dont care about. to which i thought.. well i guess when you have a patient on her first appointment maybe you could have looked at me and said "how are things going? do you have any questions or concerns" but hey thats me!
So there ya go. my BIG ANNOYING first Endo appointment. I'm going to give them another go. But I may switch if things dont go better next time. I did find out that her first A1C was 8.1... he said that, that one was okay, but he'll be more interested to see what it is after she's been on her insulin for 3 months.

[Nancy in VA]

Sorry to hear that your first appointment was rough. There is still a lot to absorb and its easy to forget things like your bag of supplies, so don't beat yourself up about that.

8.1 is actually not too bad for a young child that age. We were at 8.6 at our 3-month checkup and the Dr wasn't too concerned.

Are you hooked up with a nurse/CDE in the practice? If so, she might be able to answer some questions in-between appointments and maybe that would help

[OSUMom]

What a frustrating first appointment for sure. I have little tolerance for schedule issues like that with doctor's. Even when our appointments are on time, we are at the endocrinologist for a couple of hours with my son's appointments. His doctor is downtown and with traffic it really is an all day event and very frustrating.

I'm sorry for your first impression with this doctor's office. It's all so overwhelming anyway - to add the problems is very disappointing. :cwds:

[Ella's mom]

Thanks for sharing how Presley's first endo. appt. went. Sorry that it didn't go well. I too have forgotten Ella's diabetes supplies and it is a sinking feeling when realizing it is back at home!

Is Presley's ped. dr. concerned at the size of her head or her weight? You are diffently right that her endo should have been asking how are you doing rather than jumping into the other concerns. Hope your next visit goes smoother.

[Abby-Dabby-Doo]

I think you did the right thing on all accounts. My opinion is the office staff needs some help. When they scheduled your appointment, they should have scheduled more time for your first appointment. They should know that your going to have a ton of questions!
I would give them one more shot (no pun intended).

[selketine]

You have my sympathy. I remember when William was dx'd at 26 months and those first times to the doctor and other places - I felt like I was carrying the entire contents of my house in my purse. And it wasn't a purse - it was a gigantic bag! I've used the same bag for overnight trips for all of my stuff - LOL!

I agree with others to give that doctor another chance or two and see how it works out. As your first appt they should have taken more time to answer your questions.

I would though follow up with his concern over the head size just in case.

[jeep_bluetj]

Tough for the first appt to go poorly. Strange that the Dr wasn't paying alot of attention to how you were responding. Our first was 2-3 hours long, and the Dr and CDE made VERY sure we understood all the information and had all our questions answered.

There's plenty of endos near you though, so you can switch pretty easily if it comes to that. You could even try orange County, but it's a longer drive as there's no ped endos at Mission anymore, just CHOC Orange. Kaiser has a great Dr. in Irvine IIRC. There's some at UCI, but I've never met or heard anything about them. (We go to CHOC orange)

Forgetting stuff is part of life. Don't worry about it. heck- you were at an endocrinologist's office - one of the spots in the world where insulin should be easily found. (a sample insulin pen or something.)

[Mymommymommy]

Is Presley's ped. dr. concerned at the size of her head or her weight? You are diffently right that her endo should have been asking how are you doing rather than jumping into the other concerns. Hope your next visit goes smoother.

Yes her Ped was concerned at first about her head size. She watched it "closely" for a little while, but then realized it wasnt growing any FASTER than the rest of her. She's a big girl. her head, hight, and body are all in or above the 95% She also was a LITTLE concerned about her weight and cut juice out of her diet. Her dr is now on maternity leave and the Dr she's been seeing while Dr.Jacobs has been gone isnt worried about her head at all. He said "look at the rest of her.... she would look weird if she had a little head and a big body" made sense to me.

[momofphoenix]

I'm so sorry your first appointment went so horrible. What did the doctor mean that "these appts are not the kind of appt to sit and talk for an hour"??? our endo appts are 2 1/2 hours (unless things are going great then an hour and a half) Our endo is in Washington DC so it takes 1 1/2hours to get there and another 1 1/2 to get home plus 2 1/2hours for the appt it is a day long thing.
I hate appt issues, I will go off if they mess with our times. I have only had that happen one time at our first endo's office, he was running behind (that is all they said) 3 hours after our schedual time we finally get taken back to do hight and wieght :eek: by this time I was so mad I couldnt even talk (or I would have told him off I just know I would have) that was the one and only time it happened tho, The only good thing is he was a GREAT endo, took time to answer all our questions and even gave us additional info we had gotten when at the hospital so we had it at home and at daycare.
I hope the next appt go's better its hard enough getting into a endo without having to find a new one...

[Gwyn]

What a day---I hope you can find a bit of down time today to recouperate!

And when you're feeling better do call your endos office and find out if there is a nurse on call for questions. A lot of places you can call anytime with questions instead of saving them up for the doctor's visit.

[thedad]

I think sometimes we forget the Dr works for us and not the other way around.We are fortunate to have the head of Endo at Childrens as Nick's Dr.
I tend to go right along with whatever they tell me and not question things, my wife is very UPFRONT and always has a list of questions for the Dr. Don't give up though!!

[Mama Belle]

I think it is ridiculous that your Dr. essentially said he doesn't have time for you. Does he have a CDE that come in too, who could answer questions for you? Our endo appts are easily 2 hours long and they are always willing to answer any questions I have. If the endo can't do it, then the CDE will field the questions.

As far as Presley's weight goes, I can very much relate. My daughter was always in the 80-90 percentile for weight and 50 percentile for height. When she was a baby she was a good eater, but ate a healthy diet. The Dr. was always talking about how great it was that she was at a good weight. Fast forward to a couple of years ago and I am sitting in my pediatricians office getting raked over the coals about what I feed my child. I am being told that she obviously has major issues with her diet because her weight is too high for her height (yet she has always been proportioned this way and they never had anything to say about it except that this is just the way she is built). They told me to cut out sugary sodas and drinks. I looked at my pediatrician like she was an idiot. Since Samantha has had D since she was 4 and never drank them before DX she has never had the habit of drinking sugary drinks or soda to begin with! In fact she was drinking more juice after DX because of lows than she ever did before DX, and that amount still is no where near the amount of liquid sugar consumed by other kids her age. Since the cutting out sugary liquids lecture didn't work, she told me to reduce her fat intake. Virtually everything in our house is low fat or non-fat. I don't allow trans fats in the house at all ... ever and she eats lots of fruits (not so good with the veggies, but she will eat some). I spend a considerable amount of time at the school and compared to the rest of her classmates, Samantha is the healthiest eater in her grade! Yet, she is built on the stocky side. I am tall and slender, but her dad's side of the family is short and stocky. I think that sometimes Dr.s forget that kids come in all shapes and sizes, not just one.

Anyway, I am sorry your appointment did not go well. Give yourself a break about forgetting some of her stuff, it happens to all of us.

[Nancy in VA]

Well, I'm just surprised by all of you that get 2 hours with your Doctor. We had our appt a few weeks ago. 5 minutes with the tech drawing blood. Then about 20 minutes with the nurse/CDE where she downloaded the meter, talked over things, wrote any prescriptions that I needed (I took in a list) and then took us over to the Doc. We spent about 15-20 minutes with the Doc. He went over the #s and made a few recommendations, asked about a couple of things we had been doing with the CDE since last appt, we discussed the pump, he poked around at her for about 1 minute and then we were on our way.

[allisa]

my initial reaction reading your post was anger...I know that feeling of furstration....at staff....at too busy docs.....a good scream should let out some of that anger !

But, truly.....I'd wonder why not look at other endos ? You don't sound like you live in a remote area.....there must be plenty of other offices around....first time appts SHOULD be long. I know when we go we often vistit not only the doctor, but Nurse practioner and nutrionislast all at the same time.

I'd be looking elsewhere....there were WAY too many red flags ....over a month wait since dx to your first visit, no followup phone call, reminder letter, or reminder phone call with appt time, leaves you in room, needs to be told to ASK first how all is and how are you adjusting ? I can't even continue with my list of red flags....I'm getting angry again ! LOL I think I better go get a Mike's Hard Lemonade and cool down.....

My thought....look for a new endo that respects and understands how difficult this is on moms with TODDLERS !!

[3js]

i am sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience. i think your list idea is a good one, but it doesn`t sound like you were given anywhere near enough time for the appt. ours was a couple of hrs between the endo, nurse, and dietician, and i still left with questions!

[hold48398]

my initial reaction reading your post was anger...I know that feeling of furstration....at staff....at too busy docs.....a good scream should let out some of that anger !

But, truly.....I'd wonder why not look at other endos ? You don't sound like you live in a remote area.....there must be plenty of other offices around....first time appts SHOULD be long. I know when we go we often vistit not only the doctor, but Nurse practioner and nutrionislast all at the same time.

I'd be looking elsewhere....there were WAY too many red flags ....over a month wait since dx to your first visit, no followup phone call, reminder letter, or reminder phone call with appt time, leaves you in room, needs to be told to ASK first how all is and how are you adjusting ? I can't even continue with my list of red flags....I'm getting angry again ! LOL I think I better go get a Mike's Hard Lemonade and cool down.....

My thought....look for a new endo that respects and understands how difficult this is on moms with TODDLERS !!


I am entirely with you on this one!!!

[Twinklet]

I'm sorry your first appointment was so bad. When is your next one? If you get the same hurried answers, I'd find another doctor. We're 15 months post-diagnosis with a much older child and our appointments are easily 90-120 minutes every 6-8 weeks.

This is a lifelong illness. We need to choose our Endos as carefully as we chose our OB docs when we were pregnant. You want someone who will listen to your concerns, answer questions, offer valuable advice and mesh with your personality. If this office won't do it for you, there are others who will.

[semperwife]

MyMommyMommy... I am so sorry that you had a hard visit today. Also I am sorry we didn't get to meet before you had to go. Call me or send me an email at the semperwife addy so we can make a playdate. I would love to be able to meet you guys and give you a hug.

Don't beat yourself up over the forgotten bag. I am sure we have all done something similar. Once time Brandon didn't have any fast acting sugar sources in his backpack... he said I forgot to put them back in. Thankfully there was a juice bar in the mall.

I would try keeping a notepad with you wherever you are, that way you can write down your questions. See if the doctor's office has an email service so you can email your questions to the cde or nurse for answers.

[Mymommymommy]

Thanks everybody. i am getting tired of my dr office. I called yesterday and asked to speak with a nurse about her numbers and nobody has called be back YET! so frustraiting. So i'm really considering switching Endo office's we're going to her Pediatricians office today and i'll ask them if there are any other office's they could refer me to