Seeking out emergency medical care

Friday, December 11 my son joined with other members of the band to play a little football.  They do this every Friday night after the marching season is over, so that they can try to kill each other, just for fun.They have played in frigid cold, and in blazing hot, but the games are Friday night, after school, until it is too dark to play, which during November and December generally means around 5:30.Being young men, or “old men in training”, there are many things that should cause a parent concern.  As with most men, they have a tendency to go all out until someone is hurt. In other words, extremes can be taken.  Once they have gone that far, they just go a little further, and that is when someone gets hurt.

When I got to the school I found him limping to the car.  Not seriously, but I could tell that he was in pain.  That is one thing that I hate to see, not that any parent enjoys it, but I have a very low tolerance for pain.

He gave me a very graphic explanation of what had happened.  “Well I was running the ball and I got tackled from behind and the guy that tackled me was really big, and when we went to the ground, he landed on my legs.  Everybody heard something POP. Then I realized that my knees and ankle hurt.  My ankle is really swollen, but my knees stopped hurting once I got the ball the next time. I sat out for about 15 minutes.”

He didn’t want to go to the Doctor on Friday night since we were going to a Christmas show in Burnett, Texas.  While he didn’t really care anything about the show, he still does like spending time with the family.  (Thank God for that.)  I told him that if he wanted to go later we could.

The next morning the first words out of his mouth were “Dad, can we go to the Doctor”.  That was really a surprise on some levels, so I told him that we could.

I asked my wife if I should take him or if she would like to go too.  She said that we should all go.  So we did.  The first clinic we went to was a ProMed clinic that didn’t file our insurance.  It was going to be about $200 and then “you can file with you insurance company and get reimbursed.”  Yeah, two weeks before Christmas.  We left.

We called around and found out that NextCare would file with our insurance, so off we went.   It took about 30 minutes to fill out all of the “first time visitor” crap, but it didn’t take too long to get back to the exam rooms.  Mom stayed out in the waiting but my daughter just had to come with us.  They took vitals and then left.  It was another 40 minutes until  he was taken back for his X-Ray.

Then came the wait.  We waited.  Then we waited some more.  And then just as we thought that we had waited long enough, we waited some more.  Lovely.

This ordeal started at 11:30.  We finally got back home at 3:30 in the afternoon.  WOW.  That was just too long.  And it was just for a sprain.  I really think that anything they can’t see on the X-Ray is said to be a sprain.  That way they can justify the reason that you need to come back to see them.

Oh Well.  He is feeling better.  I am feeling better.  And we only had to pa a $30 co pay.  Cool, right?