Second Opinion Sucks

Today a nurse tried to show my son how to give himself shots. He was supposed to get a dose of Humira to treat his Crohn’s disease, which is pretty much at its worst so far. He was supposed to have four injections. She gave him one, in the stomach of all places, and he almost passed out. He totally lost it. They hold the needle in for 10 seconds so the medicine can get in. It hurt him like hell. They act like it’s no big deal but it would take a lot for me to do it. Especially right in the stomach. You are supposed to be able to use your leg as well, but is that much better? I don’t know.

Needless to say, now he not only has a fear of needles, but of big black nurses. The bedside manner we encountered today was an unsympathetic military type that doesn’t do much to soothe your nerves. And my kid was nervous. He had taken a pill for nausea so he wouldn’t throw up at the doctor’s office.

So he freaked out, I tried to calm him down, and went to talk to the doctor. He was refusing to do another injection. At one point he told a room full of people, “I can deal with the Crohn’s pain. I shouldn’t have to deal with this pain too. I don’t want your fucking drugs!” He has been through so much trying to get better for two years, and I can tell he has reached the limit at this point. I wasn’t going to argue with him.

Then we have the doctor, who is a little too chipper for my taste. She’s a short brunette, kinda cute, which is not reassuring for some reason. She smiles a lot. She has a tone of voice that somehow makes you feel stupid. She suggested we try an IV treatment of Remicade instead, even though we tried it once before. She was a little condescending, as if none of this is really any big deal, and you know, he’s an adult and if he won’t do the shots, we’ll try the IV but if the side effects don’t get him, he’ll just develop an immunity to it, you can’t use it forever and we don’t know if surgery would ever REALLY help him, I mean you can never get it ALL out, so we’ll just keep milking the insurance and stringing you along and he can eat rice. He can just weigh 103 pounds.

Fuck her.

She was a second opinion, anyway. I’m calling his regular doctor tomorrow. But the overwhelming sense of having fallen halfway down a hill I just climbed is choking the shit out of me. I had a crying jag earlier thinking about all the people who die just from the complications of this disease. All I think about is how I can help him get better. And I don’t care how many doctors I have to see.