I previously mentioned that my daughter was sick right before our planned trip to China. Our flight was on a Thursday. On the Saturday before, she started to act a bit sick. She woke up from an afternoon nap and had a minor fever or 100.4. However, every temperature from then on was normal. She had this harsh sounding cough and quite a bit of snot that was making it hard for her to sleep. Otherwise she was acting pretty normal during the day. She played and watched TV. She was a bit sweaty, but otherwise just fine.

I explained all this to the family practice doctor that we took her to see on Monday. If we weren’t traveling, I wouldn’t even have brought her to a doctor. My mother-in-law was the one that brought it up and I agreed to help alleviate her fears. She was watching my daughter on Saturday when my daughter hit her head and she’s been worried about that ever since. Nothing I say has been able to truly convince her that a bump on the head does not lead to a upper respiratory infection.

The cough, by the way, I believe is due to post nasal drip, because she definitely had snot. And she only coughed whenever she woke up. So she wakes up from her afternoon nap and is coughing and my mother-in-law calls me saying she wants to take my baby to urgent care. We get there, and urgent care doesn’t open until 5pm. The only appointment we can get is with a family practice doctor.

So I explain everything to the FP, saying that I just want clearance for travel and to assure my mother-in-law that it wasn’t her fault. She does all that. Does the typical lungs, heart, ears exam and states my baby has acute otitis media. It comes as a kind of a sup rise, since my baby has not had a fever and has not been pulling on her ears. Plus she’s never had AOM. I’m sure it helps that I’m an osteopath and I work on her head whenever she’s sick.

Either way, I’ve learned a while ago that it’s sometimes easier to just go with the doctor instead of trying to be the family doctor. But as I’m leaving the clinic, I’m thinking about it and I really think the doctor pulled a fast one on me. I also know from rotations experience that FP’s tend to over diagnose AOM. It’s like they have to slap some diagnosis, it might as well be AOM.

What can I do anyways? My daughter was diagnosed and even if I don’t agree with it, it would still be wiser to just give her the amoxicillin (a  pretty benign antibiotic). We give her the first dose right before she goes to sleep and once she’s asleep I decide to take a look in her ears. Her ears were so full of wax, I have no idea how the FP could have diagnosed AOM. So I try to remove a bit of the wax to get a better look and now I am really convinced that she doesn’t have AOM. I’m getting really frustrated with this doctor. I know sometimes doctors think that the patient expects an antibiotic, but I had clearly explained to her that I just wanted medical clearance for my daughter to travel.

So in the end we gave the antibiotic to my baby anyway. Until up to the flight and then we stopped. It gave her not too bad diarrhea. Otherwise she’s been pretty much “recovered” even before we left anyway. And now my mother-in-law is trying to get her to drink yogurt as much as possible.

I am never going back to that FP.