Height/Weight: Re: [geeks] quiet

[Tom Borton]

I'll agree with Pete's assessment - I had a "nurse practitioner" recommend a
dosage of an iron supplement for my then-1-year-old that would have been
*fatal* after just one dosage.  Lucky for us I know the rough difference
between 1.0 tsp (nurse's daily dosage in 2 0.5 tsp doses) and 0.6 ml (daily
dosage from the supplement) - my wife just about collapsed when I sat down and
showed her the conversion (5 ml to 1 tsp).  In other words, instead of 15 mg
of iron, it would have been about 120 mg of iron.  My wife, like most
Americans, has no feel for metric and would have followed the directions from
the nurse.

When my wife called the provider to suggest that maybe the nurse meant 0.5
_doses_ twice a day instead of 0.5 _tsp_ twice a day, they blew her off and
insisted she was wrong ("Oh, your daughter can ingest 54 mg of iron a day by
her weight.  No, it can't 120 mg a day in that dose, you're doing the math
wrong.").  When my wife wouldn't hang up, they transferred her to the pharmacy
to "straighten things out."  The pharmacist heard one sentence, told my wife
we were right, and promised to call the nurse back and straighten the nurse
out.

I found out that my former company dropped them as a carrier based on my
complaint, but only after I listed it as a major reason for my leaving (it was
the only health coverage for the company) and quoted the above incident.

Brrr...I get the shivers still thinking about it.  Time to go play with my
daughters instead of catching up on reading geeks archives.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: geeks-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:geeks-admin at sunhelp.org]On Behalf
Of Peter L. Wargo
Sent: 06 June 2002 20:47
To: geeks at sunhelp.org
Subject: Re: Height/Weight: Re: [geeks] quiet


On Thu, 6 Jun 2002, Mike Meredith wrote:

> Do you *really* want to gamble with your daughter's future health that
> you're right and they're wrong ? You may be right, but if it was me,
> I'd want to be *damm* sure that was the case before rejecting the
> advice of a health care professional who should know more about it than
> myself.

You would think, huh?  Let me tell you something - I've learned to check
around and talk to as many professionals (Western, Eastern, and
Naturopathic) as I can find.  If I hadn't, I'd:

A) Have taken for a longer term a drug that causes heart attacks and was
pulled from the market.  When I identified the concerns I had, the
Speacialist said "It's a fine drug."  A month later it was off the market,
but I had already taken myself off of it.

B) Be suffering from major stomach problems still, as the same
"Specialist" told me that my problem "just happened" and to stay on
Prilosec.  Turns out there was a cause, and the Prilosec was not helping,
it was aggrivating the issue.

C) My index finger would be fused.

D) I'd *still* be walikng around on a broken foot, as the first *two*
Dr.'s to look at it didn't see anything wrong other than my shattered
toes, and never took an MRI to look at why the TOP of my foot hurt...

... and the list goes on ...

I'm not saying that all doctors are bad.  Far from it, most of the ones
I've worked with have been quite good.  But, just like any profession
(especially Dentists), there are a lot of "add-ons", and sometimes very
little medicine.

-Pete