My 9 month old son had a cough for about 3 days and when it didn't get better, we brought him to Amcare to see a doctor. She listened to his chest and drew some blood and declared it was "fei yan" or pneumonia. She gave us 3 days' worth of cefaclor antibiotics, some Chinese medicine he was to drink and said we could keep giving him small doses of children's cough medicine.
After 3 days we went back to the clinic. The previous doctor was not there but we didn't think it mattered since a second objective opinion would be good to get. This doctor listened to his chest and said that he should come to the hospital for a nebulizer treatment once a day for the next two days. I just assumed since she didn't mention the antibiotics, that she was going to give the meds to him via the nebulizer (which I now understand doesn't work that way). She sent us home with 2 new bottles of Chinese and western medicine for the mucus and cough. She said if he still didn't sound better, to come back in but no one had us make an appointment.
On the second day of nebulizer treatment, I spoke to my aunt on the phone. She's been a head nurse for 30+ years and she was very upset to hear that they had only had him on 3 days of antibiotics. This made me concerned and I went in to the hospital the day after he finished the nebulizer to insist that they continue him back on the meds as she suggested. They said they couldn't fit me in but I insisted and went in and finally got to see a doctor.
The doctor listened to his breathing, took his blood and said that the white blood cells had increased and said he should have IV once a day and nebulizer twice a day for the next 3 days. They used the same antibiotics in the IV that they'd given us for the first three days. On the third day of treatment, after he'd finished his second nebulizer treatment, a doctor listened to his breathing. She said it did not sound good at all and said that he should be admitted because his breathing was rapid and his chest still sounded full of water.
I confirmed with the doctor that in fact there were 2 days that he was not given any antibiotics and I issued a formal complaint to the clinic. I felt that because of those two days and possibly because no one insisted he have a chest xray to see how bad the lungs were, he had gotten to the point of needing to be admitted. And since they do not have a pediatrics inpatient ward, I was on my own, trying to figure out where to take him, still unsure of how sick he actually was. I was promised a phone call later that day which I never received.
I did receive a call from the second doctor who had not given him antibiotics and she basically defended herself but even tried to say that there were some antibiotics in the nebulizer treatment. She said that I could bring him in to be seen by her for free but that she couldn't make any decisions in regards to other charges. I obviously declined because why would I want to waste my time seeing a doctor who obviously is not on top of things. And I knew she'd just want us to spend more money at Amcare, which I didn't want to do. I wanted to get all the hundreds of dollars I'd spent there in the last week back in my bank account!
We had to go to Peiking Union Hospital (Xie He) the next day to see a doctor. She said that he could either be admitted or not as long as we kept coming in daily for the IV antibiotics and nebulizer treatments. She agreed with the antibiotics he'd been on and he got the IV that day. The next day, we tried to go to Hua Xin which was closer to where we live but it was too crowded, chaotic and dirty so we went back to Xie He.
Except, this time we were told by the nurse that they couldn't fit us in plus, because our child is half American, they couldn't officially treat him.
The real story is this- I didn't know that my husband had had a friend of a friend give him the name of a nurse that works there who was able to "hook us up." The "hook up," apparently, was letting us be seen by a doctor and nothing more. I wasn't satisfied with the conditions, thought the service sucked and was in an all out bad mood from a combination a of lack of sleep and feeling like I had no control over the situation. I was frustrated and angry that I didn't trust the doctors in China who misuse antibiotics and I may have sworn about it under my breath a few times. Well, turns out one of the nurses heard me because when we came the next day, she was like, "yesterday you thought our conditions were bad so you better go somewhere else." We were told to go to the foreign department. Zhang Yang was feeling angry at me that I made him "lose face" but I didn't care. At this point, I was pissed! I had been feeling better that morning and then we get to the hospital and find out the nurse can choose to let us be seen or not be seen. For being in China for so many years, I'm still not into playing the game of sucking up to everyone and basically grovelling to whoever you want to help you out, even if it's their job!!
So, with no other options, we walked to the international department building and registered and paid the 20X-more-expensive-than-the-local-peds-clinic fee. The doctor who saw him completely disagreed with the medicine he'd been on. She said since he'd never had a fever, he should've never been on that antibiotic. She didn't want to give him anything but when I insisted that he shouldn't stop after 3 days, she prescribed another one, azithromycin, which is taken orally. She promised us that if he took this new medicine, she was confident he'd be better in three days.
Yesterday was the first day in over a week that we didn't have to take him to the hospital. We decided not to do the nebulizer treatment since he seemed to be breathing OK and let him rest at home. Today is the third day of the new antibiotics. While he seems to get a little better every day, he's still coughing, is raspy, has diarrhea and won't eat solids (just small pieces of food but mostly just breastmilk)...
I'm feeling defeated and wish I had a doctor that I trusted to give me some advice. I'm feeling ready to sue Amcare as I honestly think if they'd treated him properly, he would've been much better earlier. It's been 3 days and we're still waiting on someone to call us about our complaint. I plan to call them daily until someone talks to me. Yes, if I'd just spent the extra money and gone to BJU or SOS in the very beginning for a consultation, I probably would have a healthy baby on my hands by now. Lesson learned.
