Rights?

07 June 2006

I suppose this belongs on my Jairus blog, but I'm still trying to get his main story down before I start recent stuff.

I'm a little perplexed about a situation I've just learned about. I don't think I'll get into details, but, Jairus had a little bit of surgery a few weeks ago. Nothing serious--he had some cavities and with his mouth and jaw issues, the dentist decided to take care of them at Mac under general anesthesia. To my knowledge, everything went fine and he came through it no problems. This was his fourth surgery.

I learned yesterday, through a reliable source that I won't name, that the surgery wasn't as cut and dried as I was told. In fact, there was actually a need to quickly and unexpectedly call in a specialist to aid in part of the procedure. I was not told any of this when the dentist came out to tell me how it all went.

And so now I'm...disturbed. I want to know what caused the problem in the first place. I want to know if this problem has been encountered during his other surgeries. I want to talk to this specialist and get more details about what happened. But I didn't learn of what happened from the dentist. In fact I'm pretty sure he didn't want me to know.

Is that right? Should this be happening in our country?

Now I wonder what else has happened throughout our 5 years in close contact with the medical establishment. I do remember being a little surprised at how many things were done to Jairus in the NICU that we weren't told about, but found out because we happened to be there when he was being checked on, or read in his chart and asked the nurse about it.

Humho. I don't know what to do. I'm trying to think of who I could talk to about this without getting the dentist, or the person who told me what happened, in trouble.

Any ideas?

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