Three bad experiences, not even sure why we went back. My family has three bad experiences with three of our children.
The oldest child broke his arm. The doctor reset and cast the arm. At a follow up visit, it was clear to the untrained eye the bone was not resetting properly and the one end of the bone was growing on top of the other end, not into it. My husband pointed this out and the doctor dismissed him. My husband decided to get a second opinion in Columbia where the doctor scheduled him for next day surgery because the bone wasn't healing right. He had to have his arm re-broken and re-set by that doctor.
The middle child ended up with pneumonia at five. His father had taken him in and I was never notified that he was in the hospital until a family member called and asked how he was (this isn't the hospital's fault, I'm just trying to set the scene). I had left him less than a year earlier. He was an abuser and when a woman leaves her abuser, they still use tactics to try and control them through others. The social work department was like his dream. They told me if I didn't give my other child to him (even though it wasn't his parenting time) that they would not allow me to visit my other child in the hospital. They used visiting and staying with my sick child as a tool to get me to whatever my ex husband had said. And then when he refused to go get the child and return him as he had agreed, he just got away with it. Then they tried to tell me they would enforce our custody order even after we left the hospital. Someone trained in social work (it is also my field of work), gets training in domestic abuse and they just let it all go out the window and took a willing part to continue. They then send my son home with an asthma maintenance medication that is meant to be the last resort after other options were exhausted. It has all sorts of side effects and even increases the risk of asthma related death. I took him back to his family doctor and I think he nearly fell out of his chair when he found out what they had put him on. He advised me NEVER to take him there again and he had even driven his wife to a further hospital after she was in a car accident because he had zero trust in the doctors at Mercy Lebanon. He then put my son on Singulair, the general go to choice for asthma management and my son has been on it 5 years, no pneumonia and has only had bronchitis bad enough to need steroids three times.
Five years after that incident, we had our foster child there. We had chose Mercy because it was a Saturday night and by a Google search, their urgent care was the only one open (just an FYI, Cox is also open until 8:00 pm on Saturdays and I would highly recommend them). He'd been running a high fever that wasn't responding to medication and was wheezing and pulling on his ears. My husband arrived and found the urgent care closed so had to go to the ER (which we all acknowledge as unnecessary and an inappropriate place for what was going on). They had no idea why urgent care was closed but proceeded to check out the child. Because he was under two, they did a rectal temp. There is no need for that. No other hospital in the area does that, not even on a newborn. It was highly invasive and not needed. They then did two swabs, one for rapid strep and on for a culture, sent him home a determined it was a viral respiratory infection. He was miserable all weekend, and after a very sleepless Monday night, Tuesday I took him to Cox Urgent care. He had a double ear infection (which Mercy swore his ears were fine but he had symptoms on Saturday) and they felt he needed a steroid for the wheezing, which had not gotten worse since the ER visit. On Tuesday night, the charge nurse called to tell us the strep culture was in fact positive and he needed medication. I have no clue why it took FOUR DAYS to call back to get a suffering child help. It was okay, though, Cox had already...
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