Chapter 2328: Don’t Blame
If there’s an improper feeding, the more common issues are acute food poisoning or choking from mis-swallowing.
The child’s mother wants to tell the doctor everything as soon as she notices them find something, forgetting to answer the questions as they’re asked. Having seen this phenomenon before, Xie Wanying pulls the mother’s attention back, asking once more, "When did he start vomiting?"
The timing of the child’s symptoms is crucial.
The child’s mother tries hard to recall. Speaking of babies spitting up, many do it from a young age, causing some parents to not initially pay attention to the anomalies. Only when the vomiting worsens do they realize there’s a big problem.
"Maybe it was yesterday, or this morning?" The child’s mother hesitantly offers a vague answer.
The doctor already has an idea that the information provided by the parents might be inaccurate. It’s definitely not the parents’ fault. Like senior fellow student Li said, being forgetful for three years after pregnancy is common. It’s not easy for a mother; she’s never relaxed after carrying the baby for ten months and giving birth. The baby cries when hungry, cries when uneasy, day and night, preventing the adults from sleeping well at night. This mother is considered lucky for not having postpartum depression.
A good doctor should consider issues from the parents’ perspective, rather than blaming them when something goes wrong. Xie Wanying heard this from her own mother. Sun Rongfang realized this after visiting the Capital where the doctors touched her heart with their meticulous care for her sick son.
"No problem." Xie Wanying first reassures the parents.
The child’s mother wipes the sweat off her forehead and asks, "Is it serious, doctor?"
Parents who rush their children to the hospital are generally not in a clear state of mind, meaning they’re somewhat unclear about the actual situation. The truth is, they’ve already noticed something was off about the child, so they must be mentally prepared.
The doctor should try their best not to distress the parents. Otherwise, the parents might collapse first.
If a baby only a few months old suddenly passes, the mother would feel her world has crumbled. The child was arduously carried for ten months before coming into the world.
The troubling part is that younger children generally face more severe issues when things get acute. Look, the nurse is directly leading the child to surgery instead of internal medicine. It’s evident that vomiting has a different level of severity for infants compared to adults.
Adult vomiting, if not accompanied by shock or other conditions, may lead the triage nurse to initially think it’s gastroenteritis and direct them to internal medicine. When a child vomits, in clinical practice, sending a vomiting child for emergency surgery is common.
The main reason is that the child can’t express how they feel to seek help, so by the time adults notice, it’s usually too late.
"Does he cry?" the doctor asks the family again.
"He cries, he’s often crying. Ever since he was born, he cries several times at night, we even say he’s like a crybaby." The child’s mother speaks with some helplessness, unsure which side of the family her son inherited the crying habit from.
Crying is a significant signal that a child uses to express physical abnormalities. But listen, every child’s character is different; some love to cry, leaving the information provided by parents back at square one. Meanwhile, it again confirms the famous saying that pediatrics is the silent department.
For a child who loves to cry, the doctor switches tactics and asks the parents, "When did he stop crying and fussing?"
A child who’s suddenly quiet when usually a crybaby is abnormal. The parents know this, and the mother recalls and says, "Just this morning, he seemed to stop fussing. We felt something was wrong, so we brought him to the hospital."