Friday, July 29, 2011

Don't you love a Misdiagnosis?


If I didn't know anything about your boy, just looking at him right now, I wouldn't think that there is anything wrong with him!

This is what two of our doctors have told us.

Fantastic!!

All the noises that our boy makes now is completely normal since our baby stopped breathing.  So did he ever have have problems?

Does he have Tracheomalacia?  Yes. That is for certain.  He's had trouble breathing and is noisy at night.  But, he is 100% better and rarely makes his striding noise anymore.

Does he have Vocal Cord Palsy? Doubtful.

This is what we've learnt:

All the noises our young little squirt makes is completely normal.  A child with vocal cord palsy wouldn't cry a lot (ours does), they wouldn't ooh or ahh (ours does), they wouldn't sleep quietly (ours ...mostly... does).

We've also learnt that the diagnosis given could have been because he was severly inflamed after the camera went down his windpipe.  The doctor said this could have make the cords temporarily stop working.

Didn't the doctor tell you this? Is what one of our doctors said. 

Great... That would have been good to know.

So it seems, our boy's condition wasn't properly investigated.  He was quickly wheeled out of his "procedure" without lengthy investigation. He also didn't have a second scope to re-interrogate the issue.  These two things we've found were supposed to have been done prior to any diagnosis of vocal cord palsy.

But no.  We were told during the most toughest time of our life whilst our boy was struggling for air with severely constricted and inflamed airways, struggling to get better and crying for air, told that we have a child with vocal cord palsy.

Stressing about whether he will pull through after his scope.

Stressing out for months wondering will he ever talk? Will he ever eat or drink properly? Will he have breathing problems for life?

The MRI scan we had, totally unnecessary.  That week and day was terrible, concerned that there is something wrong with his brain, stressing all week and worse on the day of the scan.

All because the line up for procedures is so long, they wheel out my boy down the "factory lines" without the proper care and investigation.


Of course, they won't state that he definitely doesn't have vocal cord palsy, but if two different doctors say the same thing (especially one who current has a patient with vocal cord palsy and knows all the symptoms), I am estatic and angry at the same time. 

I'm not going to say that he definitely doesn't have the palsy though. We're kind of in limbo land about it, as aren't we supposed to trust whatever a doctor tells us?

Anyway, angry that we've been put through such stress by hosptial mistakes.

Ecstatic that our boy is likely to be as normal as the next one.

You reckon that I'm going to let this slide with the hospital though?

Pfft.  Pigs arse!  I am going to rip someone a new one.


In the mean time, I'm still ignoring these two doctors until we get another scope to check things out again.  But, how am I going to believe what they say?

One thing is for sure though, I am loving his little giggle noises that he's supposedly not supposed to make. :-)

- tork