Paging Dr. House!

I should start by saying that I have never, ever in my life watched even one episode of "House." I hear it is (was? is it still on?) a good show, but I preferred the silliness of "Scrubs" and their corresponding "a-hole with a heart of gold" character, Dr. Cox. There are only so many medical shows one can have on one's viewing schedule, you know.

Anyway, our family has definitely had a need for Dr. House recently. First of all, Bear's mom has spent the past month-and-a-half being horribly ill, ending with a week-long hospital stay during which they inflicted upon her so many forms of torture that you'd think Dick Cheney was her personal physician. None of the tests explained her symptoms or the pain she'd been having...until, finally, the doctors pulled one last-ditch test out of their hineys, and voila: the gallbladder. Funny, that's what she (and all of us) said it sounded like all along, but what do we know? She's scheduled for surgery next week, and here's hoping it marks the end of her most wretched ordeal.

Then there's Ellie. After her TSH tests came back "slightly off" a few months ago, we consulted with her pediatrician, and then a pediatric endocrinologist, both of whom wanted to repeat the blood work several times to see what was going on. Yesterday, I took her in for her 7th or 8th blood draw, and told the tech (who happened to be new to that location) to please just start with a heel stick this time, because they always poke her 2-3 times in each arm, get little to no blood, and then end up doing a heel stick, anyway.

Her response? "Oh, we can't do a TSH test from a heel stick. It has to be done from the arm, or it affects the results."

WHAT?!

So it turns out that the reason Ellie has only had one normal result in the past 4 months is because they've only successfully drawn blood from her arm once (but that time, they didn't draw enough, so the result came back with an "asterisk" and her doctor didn't fully trust it). Every other time, the various lab techs were clueless about how the test had to be done, and their idiocy resulted in my baby getting needles stuck in her dozens of times for no...effing...reason.

Feel my rage.

Of course, the good news is that Ellie is fine, and Grandma Marmee is soon-to-be fine. The bad news, however, is that there's a long list of people in the medical community with whom we are highly displeased right now, to say the least! Where was Dr. House when we needed him??