I held Stella tight as she sat in my lap, her breathing labored. I’d noticed that morning that she was pursing her lips and pushing the air out of them every few minutes, like she couldn’t get her little lungs to do the thing they normally do. I try to keep my kids out of the doctor’s office, but this seemed like one of those times when it was justified. The doctor moved the stethoscope around her back methodically, listening and looking up and to the left as if she might find her diagnosis written in the air near the ceiling.
Our intuition, our feelings, draw on the vast, normally untapped store of information recorded in our brain...mothers do know their children best. How wonderful that this doctor insisted on including that information in the decision-making process. Although this should be routine, not the exception. So many children have died following the diagnosis ‘She’s just a worried mum.’
I used to run a mental health centre...on the basis that every staff member’s opinion counted, and decisions were made only after thorough discussion had brought us to a consensus.
One day, we had witnessed a stressed mother, verging on psychosis, becoming more and more hostile to her clinging, whining toddler. The question, at the end of the day, was whether this child would be safe if we let them go home together, or should we take the drastic action of phoning the emergency ‘children at risk’ line and ask for the child to be taken to a ‘place of safety’.
My staff, mostly young and without children, one after another quoted the textbook wisdom about how damaging it was to separate a toddler from his mother. I changed the form of the question: ‘Think about that little boy at home alone with his mother, tonight. How does that make you feel?’ One by one, hands went to their stomach. I made the call for the child to go to a ‘place of safety’.
Afterwords, the staff accused me of over-ruling their decision. My defence was that I had respected the decision their feelings had made clear.
If only doctors were taught to use patients feelings as an essential part of diagnosis...instead of insisting that theory overrule whatever we have to say.....so many lives would be saved.
Our intuition, our feelings, draw on the vast, normally untapped store of information recorded in our brain...mothers do know their children best. How wonderful that this doctor insisted on including that information in the decision-making process. Although this should be routine, not the exception. So many children have died following the diagnosis ‘She’s just a worried mum.’
I used to run a mental health centre...on the basis that every staff member’s opinion counted, and decisions were made only after thorough discussion had brought us to a consensus.
One day, we had witnessed a stressed mother, verging on psychosis, becoming more and more hostile to her clinging, whining toddler. The question, at the end of the day, was whether this child would be safe if we let them go home together, or should we take the drastic action of phoning the emergency ‘children at risk’ line and ask for the child to be taken to a ‘place of safety’.
My staff, mostly young and without children, one after another quoted the textbook wisdom about how damaging it was to separate a toddler from his mother. I changed the form of the question: ‘Think about that little boy at home alone with his mother, tonight. How does that make you feel?’ One by one, hands went to their stomach. I made the call for the child to go to a ‘place of safety’.
Afterwords, the staff accused me of over-ruling their decision. My defence was that I had respected the decision their feelings had made clear.
If only doctors were taught to use patients feelings as an essential part of diagnosis...instead of insisting that theory overrule whatever we have to say.....so many lives would be saved.