Questions for the GI Dr

[Anonymous]

I am paying privately to go and see a GI pead 2morrow and it is costing alot of money but the NHS has pretty much said they won’t help with my daughter anymore.

So we are having to go to London and I’m really worried that he won’t take us seriously as my daughter is gaining weight well (comfort eater) and has tried a number of meds. She is on prilosec and i feel this med is helping somewhat but the dosage needs upping.

This dr is meant to be one of the top consultants in the world on children’s reflux so i don’t need to take any info with me as he knows all about meds and dosages.

The question is should i take a list of questions with me to ask and if so what should i ask him???

[Anonymous]

i would take the marci-kids.com info for sure , because you never know.
you may have heard one thing, but you may leave dissapointed.

[hellbennt]

I would go with a list of things to ‘tell’ the doctor and also things to ‘ask’ the doctor,

like why you’re they’re exactly, spending your own $$, etc

& what has been done, what is being done & what you would like to be seen done…

[Anonymous]

I agree with the others. I think it will help if you know beforehand what you hope to get out of the appointment. I also would expect that they probably won’t up the dose much higher, so be prepared to have to fight that battle. I’ve had so many doctors appointments for Hailey, and the worst was always waiting for the appointment and then being disappointed because they wouldn’t do what I had expected. The worse was the one where we waited over 4 months to be transferred as an “emergency case” because of Hailey’s situation. The appointment was with the top GI at our children’s hospital, which has a very good reputation around the world. This guy is supposed to know his stuff. Anyhow, he didn’t want to up Hailey’s meds either, said she was fine because she was gaining, and that he’d see us again after Hailey’s scope (which was more than 6 months later)…actually next week.

I guess my point is to know what you want, but still to be prepared to fight. I’ve found that even the BEST doctors (reputation wise) tend not to take reflux very seriously in a baby who is thriving (aka gaining). They tend to take a wait-it-out approach. We actually found that the bigger the docs reputation, the less seriously they took our situation, mainly because they’d seen worse. I’ve also found most of them to be conservative with meds.

I hope that this doesn’t happen to you. But you might want to go in armed with info and research. Not necessarily marci-kids, if that’s not your thing, but I used to bring marci-kids stuff with me.

Also, I’d always insist on laying out a plan of action before leaving. It wasn’t acceptable to say, let’s wait for her to outgrow it. I’d want to know what we were going to do in the meantime, and what we were going to do until the next appointment. How long we’d try each change, and what to do if there was no improvement.

Good luck. I hope I didn’t paint too grim of a picture. (I’ve become quite a pessimist as far as docs are concerned.) Please update us when you get back.

[Author]

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