Team player

In time the overwhelming instinct to eat overpowered any "learned behavior" that Christopher may have developed due to his feeding problems, but with every bottle his stomach was growing larger and larger.  He was crying all the time.  I knew something was very wrong. The feeding specialist knew it too, and so did the GI doctor.  Clearly, there was something else going on here. 

The problem was that Christopher was still under the care of the surgical service.  Huh???  I know.  I wondered about that too.  It's a whole hospital thing that I knew nothing about.  Apparently, within the hospital there are "teams" of doctors who perform different specialties.  When a patient enters the hospital system, he is assigned to a specialty team according to his needs.  That team "has the ball," and they call all the shots.  They may consult with other teams, but they have the ultimate authority and responsibility until the patient is released to a different team or leaves the hospital.  I soon found out that this is an unbreakable hospital code.  All other specialty teams defer to the team in charge.  Who knew?  Not only are there students, interns, and attendings to contend with,  but there are also different rotations (of students and interns) and specialty teams.   

Christopher's team, basketball that is!

I'm sure there are some very valid reasons for this type of system within a hospital, but I found that there was one major downside.   Sadly, the teams would often compete against one another!  I found this absolutely disturbing!  I was really amazed when they would do this in front of me.  It became such a big issue that one day I interrupted their bickering and told them to stop arguing.  I made it absolutely clear that I thought we were all on the same team, Christopher's team!!!

At this point in his hospital stay, Christopher was on the surgical service.  That meant they had control of his care, and  it was their opinion that he was still suffering from the flu.  Although this made no sense at all, they weren't willing to let go of it.  I was told that I should not worry.  The problem had been solved with the surgery.  The surgeons told me that he would get better, go home, and lead a normal life (I sure wish they had been right).  It became clear to me that their motto was: "if surgery won't fix it, it's not a problem."   Days and days passed before they finally decided that "their work here was done."  They released Christopher to the GI service.

Given the sheer size of Christopher's protruding stomach, as well as, his incessant screaming it was hard for me to believe that they could possibly think for one minute that all was well with him.  I was just glad to be working with the GI team again. 

Needless to say, I had retained my title as "the lady with the crying baby."  In fact, I had cemented it in stone until one night my husband came to Christopher's rescue with what turned out to be a brilliant idea.  It shed light on the problem, and started the GI staff looking for a diagnosis in a new direction.


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More tomorrow...