Pedi GI in NW Chicago suburbs

[Anonymous]

Hi, it’s been a while, but I just wanted to offer a recommendation for Dr. Lee Bass with Children’s Memorial in Chicago. I believe he works out of both the Lincoln Park and Arlington Heights facilities. My son saw Dr. Bass twice.

My understanding is that Dr. Bass himself has a child who had GERD as an infant. By the time I had seen him, I had already seen Dr. Suzanne Nelson. This is a separate topic (I will write about at the end of this post). I would definitely NOT recommend Dr. Nelson.

Anyhow, after dealing with Dr. Nelson and being frantic to find something that worked for his reflux, I had already begun to dose him at MARCI guidelines using CCMax by the time I saw Dr. Bass. Dr. Bass seemed familiar, if not entirely so, with Reflux Solutions products. He did believe that I was dosing highly and he questioned me somewhat sharply regarding why I had gone to such a high dosage. I explained that I had worked my way up to that, that I felt it was critical, and that this was within MARCI guidelines. He said, basically, ok, but no higher. While I would have hoped that he would have been informed more thoroughly of MARCI, I understand that as a first time patient who had undertaken dosing myself, it might have seemed kind of odd. So, I will attribute the sharpness to concern and due diligence over assessing the situation for the first time. Dr. Bass was very gentle and caring towards my son. As has been my experience at Children’s generally, he and his staff were easy to work with. I have referred a couple other people to him, and they have been very happy with him. He was referred to me by another mom with a GERD baby.

I would NOT recommend Dr. Nelson. There are many reasons why. I did not like her demeanor or “bedside manner” with either myself or my son. I thought her office policies were bizarre – I have never been charged by another pediatric doctor for afterhours phone calls or letters (at one point I asked for a letter to see if my insurance would cover alimentum and was told it would be $25). She was totally dismissive of my concerns about getting a prevacid compound compounded at a pharmacy and how long it would be stable for. Her nursing staff was clueless. They didn’t even know how to weigh my son since he didn’t want to lay like a log on their completely flat (with no guards) baby scale. When I called later to ask if the pharmacy compound might be giving him gas, her nurse told me, well, you’ll just have to be a detective and try to figure it out! Like, isn’t that why I have a GI dr? To answer these kinds of questions? At the end of the appt, my mom went to throw away a poop diaper. It just happened that one nurse was training another, so she decided to use that as an example for the test they run to see if there is blood in the stool. Well, lo and behold, there was! Go figure, not like there was any reason to run the test even though I had told her that we suspected MSPI! So the nurse said, she may want to put him on neocate, let me ask her. So we proceeded to sit there another 25-30 minutes after we had completed our appointment while the nurse waited to talk to Dr. Nelson. Needless to say, when you have a small infant, you don’t want to sit in the waiting room that long – I don’t understand why she couldn’t have just politely knocked and asked if this was something she could decide immediately – or called me back when she got an answer. I find it hard to believe that the dr was in with a patient for 25-30 minutes given that she spent about 7 minutes with us. I walked out and said to my mom who had come with me, there is no way I’m coming back here, that woman is a b—-. Sorry for the strong opinion, but the whole appointment was a complete waste of time as far as I was concerned and I walked out livid at being treated so rudely.

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