From experience, we know that not all pediatric doctors treat unvaccinated children, so when making an appointment, I asked the receptionist to talk to the doctor and make sure that it would be OK for us to bring K in. All the girls said that it shouldn't be a problem, but after they actually talked to the doctor, their stories changed. From one of the offices, I received two phone calls informing me that the doctor would prefer not to see Klaudia.
Eventually one doctor agreed to see her (there were more, but this one could see us right away vs. for the other ones, we'd have to wait for weeks to get in) , but under the condition that I sign a form saying that I refuse to vaccinate K. Sounded simple; we made an appointment for the following day.
The first thing I noticed that I didn't like was that there was only one entrance to the office and that the waiting room was full of sick kids. Our previous doctor had two seperate entrances - one for wellness appointments and one for sick children. I never really appreciated it until now when I saw all these poor coughing, sneezing and misearable looking kids.
The nurse checked K's measurements, and I forgot to ask for the percentile. One thing I remember her saying was that K's head measurement was normal. Again, I did not ask for the percentile, but if it's normal, it means that for the first time, K's head fits within the chart.
And then we met the doctor. He checked K's eyes, ears, throat, poked her belly, and then he spent the rest of our 10-minute appointment asking why we refuse to vaccinate. I guess my reasoning wasn't good enough because he brought his book with some statistics and went over some of the diseases to prove that we do need to vaccinate. He started with 1950s, and showed us (OK, me, K wasn't into it at all) that some 13, 000 children were sick with diphteria in the US, and there were a bit over 1,000 deaths from it that year. Then he moved to 2005, and showed that there were 6 cases of that disease but no deaths. He went over a few of the diseases like that with very similar numbers, and I'm very glad he did because it just assured me that the chances of getting one of them are very tiny, and that even if K contracts them, she will survive and most of all will get immuned for the rest of her life. I just wish I had my statistics with me that show how many children get injured every year from the DPT vaccine alone. I doubt he would listen though. So, I was a bit disappointed with our appointment. I thought that telling the doc ahead of time of our decision about the vaccines would somehow help us avoid the topic, but I was wrong. We didn't get to talk about K's development. I was looking forward to hearing about what to expect within the next year or how to encourage K to start talking, but none of it was mentioned. And, I was never given the form where I had to sign to refuse to have K immunized. I wonder if they sensed that we wouldn't be back.
2 comments:
Yay, glad to hear that K is doing great! We went for the 2 yr checkup last month. Everything was fine. We still had to sign that annoying form about not wanting to vaccinate. But the doctor is very nice and has never questioned our decision. She's offered info when we ask, but that's it. It may be a 45 minute drive, but worth not being scrutinized. Almost makes me think that you need to carry around a sheet of your own stats on why you shouldn't vaccinate.
Hey Kate,
If you think about it from the Dr perspective, he only knows what he was taught in school and what the AMA and AAP and the CDC tell him. And from my research, obviously, there are more independent sources of information. So, anyway, you could so kindly show him your information the same way that he took some valuable time to show you his. In fact, he sounds like he cares. He really thought he was helping you...and the public. He may not agree but he may respect you for having your "ducks in a row."
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