After a few weeks here at WakeMed, it’s become increasingly obvious that the various combinations of drugs aren’t controlling the seizures well at all. He’s still getting clusters of them daily and so it’s time to see what a pediatric neurosurgeon has to say about it.
Several theories have been thrown out there for us to consider with the leading one being cortical dysplasia (an area of his brain didn’t develop properly). There have also been suggestions that there may be a tumor (something you wouldn’t necessarily see with MRI), stroke, and a couple of other suggestions.
You know, in the beginning we thought we were home free…Alexander had made it to term and he was such a beautiful baby (and still is, for that matter!). We had no idea that we would look back upon Nicholas as being the easier of the two even with his longer initial stay in the hospital after delivery!
Pop quiz time! Which do you think is more intelligent: moving a seizure-prone baby 40 miles west or having healthy neurosurgeons come 40 miles east to see him and the data? If you give the healthcare industry a set of choices, they invariably seem to take the least intelligent/most insane option.
We understand the liability concerns and the likelyhood that risk management would go ape at the idea of a Duke doctor practicing at WakeMed but liability law isn’t a suicide pact, either. Especially when Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic would provide opinions on any data we sent their way. (We would later figure that the motivation for Duke not really wanting to see Alexander or the copious data on him has more to do with our friends George Washington and Abraham Lincoln than it does any liability concerns…i.e. telephone consults are typically not reimbursed by insurance companies). But still…
So Alexander gets a $3,100 ride in an ambulance to Duke Medical Centre today to see what their pediatric neurosurgeon has to say about his condition.
Upon arrival, I remembered something that I had forgotten when my stepfather was over at Duke for his procedures. Intentionally, that is! The place is literally a rabbit hutch…the rooms are tiny compared to the ones they have at WakeMed. And when I say tiny, I’m referring to the black hole of Calcutta tiny, much like the amount of personal space on the average train of Calcutta during rush hour! The rooms are SMALL! Did I beat that dead horse enough?
The other thing you learn quickly is that there is a world of difference between a teaching hospital and a regular hospital. That means you get interminable numbers of residents poking their head in and interrogating you about your child’s case. That rather gets old after the third or fourth time, particularly when all of the residents feel free to stop by one right after another. Once, maybe twice…but when the charts and the MRI films are sitting on the table and are available to you, how about you read the chart and satisfy your curiosity before interrogating us for the whole story again, eh? Thanks!
We wouldn’t discover until later that evening that Duke’s parking is particularly more expensive than WakeMed’s. Like the rates are twice as high! Unfortunately, Alexander being at Duke also means that I’ve got that long commute again (I thought being bought by A4 meant we were done with that long commute! Darn. And even though Duke is slightly closer, that hardly makes a difference when you have been at work all day and you’re going down that lonely road at night!)
