A new medical experience

The twins & baby were sick all week. High fevers, body aches, the works. Wednesday SJ(baby) screamed all day... on & off. She had been obviously sick with a fever since Tuesday-- one so high we had to put her in tepid bathes on & off to lessen it. So after all the natural & homeopathic remedies didn't work, I decided to load her up & take her to Urgent Care. A family friend was nice enough to come over & stay with twins while they slept.


The doctor who saw us was a female & we'd seen her before, not with SJ, but Bella. She remembered us, probably b/c it's hard to forget a family with multiple kids on the Autism spectrum. When she looked over SJ, she kept asking me questions, about vaccinations, diet restictions, etc. A little weird, not just the ordinary sick visit stuff. SJ had been crying so much, that her green eyes wore red rings around them, as she did the little after cry hurmple sound. She kept counting, in her baby announciation "one. two. free, four, fibe....." The doc said to me, "she's just so beautiful" & "good job, big girl" to SJ.


Turns out SJ had her first ever ear infection. I thought she may have picked up strep, but needless she needed an antibiotic. We went over the prerequisites list: no caseinate, no dairy anything, no gluten, no DYES & no sulfa. We spoke about DYES & the physician was curious. I told her about our ER visit that resulted in me giving SJ generic Motrin with red dye, when the pharmacy was out of dye free-- now that was fun (sarcasm). The near seizure followed by lifelessness... it's amazing how fast you can make a 20 minute trip in about 10 minutes when you need to.


This urgent care doc. was so empathetic, so curious-- it was truly a new medical experience for me. And, refreshing I'll add. When doc had decided on medication, she said, "hang in there, Mom"-- I'm calling in the Rx so you won't have to wait. WOW- that was nice. She looked at me, put her hand on my shoulder & said, "it's in my family, too"... "I have a daughter who is one, so we'll see." The look she had deep within her eyes was all out fear, one I know to the pit of my stomach & achiness of my heart. Now I understood the depths of her questions & hate that she may see that reality for her child.

My only thoughts were, what about the families that this (Autism) doesn't run in? IT wasn't in our family, b/f our family. Yet people seem oblivious to this fact until someone they love is affected, & honestly even then some remain unaffected if it's not directly their child. I don't know how to change this aspect, but I hope through our journey the people we meet will start to ask questions & be empowered by knowledge & wisdom. I know we are on this journey for a reason, yet it's my hope that others may avoid this road by knowing us.