"I am writing this crying with impotence because I am fed up with what is happening with Social Security on this island. It turns out that this Wednesday I get a call from the daycare where I take my son because he had a fever. He had been like this for 3 days, plus two months with a cough, mucus and eye discharge. I decide to skip Social Security and take him to a private pediatrician and how right I was!
The pediatrician, as soon as he saw how the poor boy was breathing and the cough he had, told me: 'This child is very sick, haven't you taken him to the pediatrician?' I took him to my health center, the one in Playa Blanca, at the beginning of January, and they told me that he had a simple cold, that I shouldn't give it importance because the child, going to daycare, was going to get sick a lot.
In mid-January I took him to his corresponding check-up. The doctor told me that since they gave me the wrong appointment, he wouldn't see me. Despite not having patients and it not being my fault, he refused to give me the appointment. I went to the counter and they gave me an appointment for the following week.... anyway.
That same night the child vomited three times with the coughing fits and had some difficulty breathing. I didn't think twice and went to the General Hospital first thing in the morning. I assumed that a pediatrician would see him there. Nothing could be further from the truth. The emergency room doctor saw me, a general medicine doctor who treats me like a criminal for going to the General Hospital, for something that in his opinion was not an emergency.
I overlook this lack of respect towards someone who religiously pays their taxes, from which, by the way, this doctor's salary comes, and I tell him the facts again. He made me repeat 4 or 5 times what was happening to the child until, as expected, I got tired and asked him if he was going to keep asking me or if he was going to attend to the child. The polite doctor replies: The account of the facts must be as reliable as possible... do you know the meaning of the word reliable? I was even more outraged, but again I overlooked the lack of respect so that he would attend to the child. His diagnosis: the child has a cold, the vomiting is normal, the lack of appetite is normal, give him some Apiretal or Dalsy.
The following week I went to the check-up with the doctor at the Playa Blanca Health Center and he told me that he was a little congested. I told him about the vomiting, which continued night after night, and he told me that it was normal, that I should stay calm.
That Saturday I went to the Emergency Room because the child had very red eyes and some eye discharge that made it hurt when he opened them. They told me that he had catarrhal conjunctivitis and prescribed me eye drops. They told me not to worry, that it's normal.
This Monday I went to my health center again, because the child had not slept at night due to the cough and also woke up with a fever. This time there was a new pediatrician who, when I told her that the child had been coughing for 2 months, smiled at me and said: "This is not an emergency, I'm going to look at him but it's better if his doctor sees him, who is now in the afternoons".
She did a routine exam, ears, throat, chest, and told me that what the child had wasn't even a cold, that he had his bronchi a little congested but nothing to worry about. She told me that when he goes to daycare his bronchi are constantly fighting against viruses, that it's not that the child has had the same cold since December, but that his bronchi until he is a year, a year and a half old, are not going to be developed.
The child still had a fever and that afternoon he threw up everything he had eaten. This Wednesday I took him to the pediatrician, a real one, and, angry with me, he asked me if I hadn't taken him to the doctor. I laugh so I don't cry.
My child, well, my 10-month-old baby has conjunctivitis, otitis in both ears, tonsillitis and the beginning of pneumonia. He sent me a treatment and depending on how it evolved, he would decide whether to admit him to the hospital. But I'm not worried, because it's normal, it's just a cold because the child goes to daycare".
