The not-so-special specialist

I'm continuing Greysen's story from here...

At 18 months old, Greysen was referred to a G.I specialist in Billings, Dr. Ofelia Marin. The first thing that should have clued me in was the HUGE parrot cage in her office. I'm not sure why, but it seemed a little odd to me that you would have an animal in a doctors office where people with lots of allergies and medical issues come to visit. #2 was her foreign accent. I love a good accent but when it comes to discussing medical things where the language can already be confusing, then you add in an accent that I can't understand, the two just don't mix. And lastly, she was just a bad doctor. She rushed us through Greysen's history, gave him a rectal exam in a very rough manner, then charged us $300 to tell us he just needed more fiber. At the time, we had insurance but the deductible was high so we basically paid full cost for every visit. I remember feeling frustrated because we didn't have the money to keep taking him back just to tell us nothing was wrong. I'm not sure if other people have dealt with a husband who is upset they just spent $300 for nothing and a wife who knows something is wrong even though the doctors say he is fine. What is a mom to do?!

We left her office feeling a little hopeful that MAYBE he did just need more fiber. He was supposed to have 20+ grams per day of fiber. This is a difficult task for an 18 month old because they are picky eaters anyways. Most servings of fiber are 2-3 grams in each food item and if you can find a yogurt with 5 grams you are doing good. The doctor sold us some ridiculously expensive high fiber juices that contained 10 grams in each juice box. I think it was $40 for 15 juices. Luckily my parents helped us out and were so sweet to buy them for us. Thanks mom!

After 2-3 months of the high fiber diet it didn't seem to help much. The problem was that some weeks it seemed to be helping then all of a sudden he would be backed up again. It really was a tug of war. I would go from being really concerned to thinking maybe he was getting better. I would put off taking him to the doctor, cancel the visit, only to reschedule a few weeks later. I really was confused and torn and frankly didn't know what to do. So back we went to the parrot lady....err...I mean doctor.

This second visit was even more worthless than the first. She felt his tummy, told us to keep up the high fiber diet, and come back in 2-3 months. That visit was also $300....we never went back after that. To this day I do not understand how the medical system can work the way it does. I am paying the doctor to find out what is wrong yet they can take my money and do NOTHING and I cannot demand a refund?? I just PAID you to investigate my child and you told me to feed him fiber. The other thing that makes no sense to me is that she could have run ANY tests she wished. Again, I would be the one paying for it so why wouldn't she have tried something? Anything would have been better than nothing. Even if she had drawn his blood I would have felt that paying her $300 was worth something!

So we went on with life as it was, stuck to a high fiber diet, lots of benefiber, and eventually had to use enemas to get his waste out of him. We had always thought Greysen was a quiet child but didn't realize that it was the build-up of stool causing him to be lethargic. We began to notice that after giving him an enema he would get tons of energy and seem like a much healthier child. Little did we know, things were much worse than we thought...

Hard to believe he is so sick here and we didn't even know it!

Little Sister Harper came along in 2009

Such a sweet and tenderhearted boy