Rhys was 4 months old when we moved to New York. He was current on his well-baby checkups and vaccinations. It took me about 3 months to get on the ball, and then to figure out where and how to apply for Medicaid here (which is another story) and about 2 months after applying to receive our acceptance letter and medical cards. At that point, we went back to Utah for Christmas break. So Rhys was 10 months old by the time I got him into his first doctor here to catch him up on his vaccinations.
If you've read my post "Immunizations? Fuggedaboutit!" you know how our experience with our first doctor started out. It went downhill from there. Our first and only appointment with Dr. Vitale was for a well-baby check and to get started catching him up on his 6 month shots. David went with me, which ended up being a really good thing for my sanity. To make a long story short, the office was tiny, dirty, and cluttered. The receptionist/nurse didn't speak a word of english. The equipment she used to take his weight, temperature, and measurement was ancient. Dr. Vitale was dressed in dirty, torn jeans and a hawaiian shirt. He had long, greasy salt and pepper hair tied in a pony tail with a long mustache and gnarly beard. He also had long, yellow, dirty fingernails. He had terrible bedside manner and his breath smelled.
He hurled a bunch of questions at me as we sat in his cramped office surrounded by stacks of newspapers, files, and other various clutter. He somehow worked in that the reason Mormons have so many kids is because it's the only way to perpetuate the cult, just like Jews and Catholics. Then he pulled out 3 phials of vaccines, rubbed some alchohol across Rhys's legs and without washing his hand or putting gloves over his filthy fingernails, slowly proceeded to give Rhys 3 shots. When he had finished, he didn't swab the bleeding or put a bandaid on as the blood began to trickle. We had to ask him for a bandaid after we realized he was not going to offer one. As we tried to comfort Rhys who was screaming bloody murder (which is not like him by the way, even with shots) he told us not to worry about comforting him because it wouldn't work right then anyway. I left in complete shock and disbelief. I cried all afternoon and felt like the worst mother in the world for allowing that dirty old man to get anywhere near my child with a needle. I felt like I should have jumped in front of him and taken it in the arm Secret Service style. Thankfully his legs didn't get gangrene and fall off, but that doesn't make me feel any better.
We resolved right away of course to find a new doctor. But as I asked around, I couldn't seem to find anyone that could say they were super happy with their pediatrician. I poured over the list of approved doctors, and finally decided I liked the idea of the Pediatric Clinic at St. Luke's Hospital which is just a few blocks down the road from us and directly across from Columbia University. My reasoning was that if it's part of a hospital, it should be clean and up to date. If it's across from a University, it should cater to a fairly nice element of people. Since it's a larger clinic, I figured there would be more of a wait and less personal attention than Dr. Vitale's office, but I thought was an okay trade-off if it could offer the other things that are important to me: sanitation, current medical knowledge, sanitation, english speaking staff, sanitation, and so forth.
Because we saw Dr. Vitale during the first week of March, I had to wait until April 1st to have the change in doctors take effect. As luck would have it, Rhys came down with a fever during the night and woke up pulling on his ears on April 1st. I called the clinic's number, which had been fairly easy to get an answer from a few weeks earlier- but no dice. We called all morning but to no avail. So David ran down to see if we could come in without an appointment. When he got there, it was pretty crowded and they told him to sign the walk-in list. He was the second person on the list, so he called me and said I'd better get down there. I got there at 10 am. We sat in the hot, crowded, filthy room with about 40 other people for 2 hours. Finally, they called his name.
They took us back to what looked like a pretty normal clinic, which made me happy. They took his temperature and weight, and then sent us back to the waiting room.
Another 2 hours went by before they finally put us in an exam room. It was way past his lunch and naptime at that point and the poor sick little thing had turned into a hot, puffy, red-eyed zombie. While we continued to wait, I noticed that the tissue paper on the exam table looked rumpled and used, so I changed it myself. We waited another half hour before the doctor graced us with her presence. She was nice enough, and took the time to make friends with Rhys before starting to examine him, but she didn't wash her hands before touching him either. Am I taking crazy pills here? Have the basic tenets of proper sanitation changed since I last looked?
She quickly looked in his ears, eyes, and throat and wrote us a prescription for amoxicillin. I explained to her that we had waited over 4 hours and asked her if it was always this bad. She told me no, that one of the other doctors had failed to show up and no one could find him. She'd had to cover all his patients until they located him and that it should be a lot better next time, especially with an appointment. In light of that and the fact that although the waiting room experience was horrible the rest of the clinic seemed up to speed (not up to the speed of most clinics in Utah, mind you- but up to speed enough for New York standards), I decided to keep our appointment today for his well-baby check and the rest of his 6 months shots.
Our appointment was at 10:45. I showed up at 10:40, prepared with enough toys, treats, and formula for what I thought wouldn't be more than 2 hours total at the worst. This time, I had a very healthy 11 month old to wrangle instead of a droopy sick one so it was much harder, especially because I didn't dare let him crawl around or play with the waiting room toys. But we handled it pretty well for the first hour.
At 11:45, they finally called us back. I wasn't happy that it had gone an hour past our appointment time, but I've gotten used to delays in this city so I was ready to roll with it. After the nurse measured and weighed him she sent us back to the waiting room saying she'd call us back in as soon as a room opened up. Is this sounding familiar?
2 miserable hours later, way past lunch time, way past nap time, out of entertainment, out of treats and with an empty sippy cup I finally decided we'd both had enough. The time I'd already invested wasn't worth putting us both through another hour (at least) and subjecting him to a slew of shots instead of getting lunch and a nap. Fighting back tears, I packed up and left.
I bawled unashamedly most of the way home as I expressed my frustrations over the phone to my sister. I don't know if the problem lies with what's available to us on Medicaid, or with what's available in NYC, or both. But I'm sick to death of it.
As I was coming in to my building, I passed my upstairs neighbor and told her a little bit about the ordeal. She told me she used to go to the same place, but has found a much better one now. She's also on Medicaid, but not the same healthplan as us so I'm not sure if I'll be able to switch to a plan that covers her doctor... and I'm not going to worry about it until September. I'm through with NYC doctors and clinics for now and I'm not going to deal with them any more than I have to until then.
And that is why Rhys will be getting caught up on the past 6 months of vaccinations at the blessed Utah County Health Department this summer.
Happily slurping down his well-earned amoxicillin
