Year 3 - Day 73 - March 13

After reading another recommendation from Danielle, I picked this book up and read it last weekend. It's a dad's memoirs of how his family dealt with the health issues of their son. He was born with a congenital heart defect and had surgery as a baby to correct it. Now the son is a teenager and dealing with issues all over again. Living in NYC, they have access to some of the (perceived) greatest health care in all the land at Columbia. However, it seems at times that the doctors are a little too self important and worried about making themselves sound like the greatest at the expense of careful patient care and monitoring. If I called a doctor several times about a symptom and they brushed me off, I'd be a little ticked. Especially if it led to major complications. REALLY especially if I found out that those symptoms were known to commonly cause those severe complications.

The one thing that bothered me about the book was the dad's self important views. He was so frustrated the the docs had big heads, but the dad had the biggest head of all. If he name dropped once, he did it a thousand times. He told us how important his job was and how stoic he was. The son was never mentioned in anything less than a perfect light. When you make your family out to be the shining examples that are all that's right in the world, your arguments that the doctors are evil have a little less "oomph" in my opinion. There was no middle ground in the book, just black and white. Good and evil. I feel like the polarizing opinions made me wonder more about the doctors response.

Also, in a job where we get to know the hovering parents, I wonder how that plays out in the medical world. If a parent calls every day "His temp is 98.7. It's a fever! I'm coming in!" does that make the doctor less likely to listen when there's a real problem? The whole boy that cried wolf thing? I don't know. But something to think about.