Yesterday, and the day before, was an excursion through what is left of the health system in Melbourne.
Eilis was sick with what we thought was mastitis on Monday, but couldn’t get an appointment with a doctor. Then the Maternal Child Nurse line helped us by calling her doctor, who wrote a prescription for antibiotics.
Tuesday afternoon Eilis started having what we thought was a reaction to the antibiotics. She left a message for her doctor and the medical receptionist called back saying “stop the antibiotics!” By 6pm she was completely dehydrated so I called the medical rooms again and insisted I speak to the doctor. That took a while. The doctor suggested trying the locum service.
The locum arrived about 9pm and gave Eilis a shot of anti-nausea drug, and a prescription for more, and I fed the baby formula and it all looked like things were getting better.
Eilis got up about 1am to pump and decided to take the throwing up carnival to the kitchen and laundry in amidst sterilising the pumping equipment.
It was about that time I discovered that there is no 24 hour pharmacy in Melbourne. The closest thing is a late night pharmacy in Sydney Road that shut at 12am. Poop.
So we tried the Western Hospital in Sunshine and a grumpy nurse told me we could come in but it would be an eight hour wait. And no, it doesn’t matter that Eilis is breast-feeding and we have a 2 month old baby. Just wait, would you.
So I tried the Royal Women’s and the receptionist transferred us through to Nurse-On-Call, because we had the baby at another hospital, who spoke to us for about 15 minutes and then told us to go to the emergency department at the Royal Women’s because if we turned up they couldn’t turn us away.
So we packed the baby up, made it to the hospital, filled out the paperwork and were seen to relatively quickly by a nurse who knew everything (except what was wrong). At about 2.30am a doctor told Eilis to stop taking the antibiotics (um, yeh). And to drink more fluids. After I had already told her that fluids were out of the question. So we pushed for IV fluids (seriously, we had to suggest this to the doctor. twice) and by 3am we were out of there.
Today Eilis is feeling much better. But we are all a bit over the place and emotional. I also hereby make a mental note never to get sick while living in the west.
14:00
