I am happy that I can love my wife and my children dearly. However, the flipside of this is whenever any of them show any signs of getting sick I get extremely worried. I simply do not want anything bad to happen to them, and am worried to go to a doctor too late. My gut instinct is to go to the emergency room for every small issue, but I consciousely understand that this is not a logical response.
Do any of you have suggestions on how I can figure out what an appropriate response to different types of sickness symptoms would be?
Sign up for a first aid for children course. The best way to manage these feelings and fears is to be prepared to manage them directly. If you learn some first aid then you’ll be able to manage a lot of problems yourself and know when you can’t and need help.
Knowledge is power
This is a very common response for new fathers. I went through, and you just start to look for the signs and learn how to adjust. I remember for my youngest, we took her to the emergency room once, and they ended up simply upping her Tylenol dose from 5 ml to 7.5 ml because she grew so much. Keep being engaged with them, and you’ll be fine. Through this all, just remember to take care of yourself as that will creep up on you.
Same same, when my daughter was about 3 had blood in her stool, that time we took her to the hospital and she spent some days there with my wife. It was nothing, never happened again.
Another time she started screaming and said she had pain in her stomach, it was one of those scary screams when you know something is wrong, I was driving as fast as possible but encountered traffic and heard her laugh on the backseat. I guess it was just gas or something, we went back home.
And finally she fell playing in a floor fountain and opened her chin, the wound bled a lot and we took her to emergency, while waiting she forgot she was injured and started playing and jumping while waiting.
What I wanted to share with these stories is: humans are delicate but resilient. What OP is feeling is normal and I had exactly the same doubts. But with time you get the experience and you start “know” when something is wrong.
Depending on your location and situation, you may have access to a nurse line or fast telemedicine (basically a zoom call with a random doctor). They can diagnose many ailments remotely, and at least tell you what the next steps should be.
I don’t know how is your country situation. Over here it is said “don’t go to emergency room unless you have an actual emergency”. Triage will make you wait for longer than an actual doctor appointment in a uncomfortable room full of sick people, not the place you want to be when you have a small disease.
Also emergency room doctors are trained more in stabilizing emergencies. For small diseases you’ll get better diagnosis and treatment in a general doctor.
I would advise in learning what constitutes an emergency or not and act accordingly.
Yeah, ER is almost never the right place. But if you do go to an ER, make sure it’s attached to a hospital. The free standing ones are notorious for predatory billing and will take your first born after saving them. And your insurance will fight to not cover it.
Urgent care and minute-clinic type things can be good. Primary care physicians are typically best, though they may be difficult to get an appointment for.
Urgent care facilities commonly double as ERs. In that case, I believe they’re legally required to get you to sign a specific form before they can charge you for an ER visit. Speaking from experience, it’ll just about 10-40x the rates and they’ll still charge you for an urgent care visit on top. Also speaking from experience, check your insurance plan before doing this. My insurance card said $150 copay for ER visits, but the plan was actually $150 + 10% (still unbelievably good in freedomland), plus they refuse to cover any of it anyway and the appeals process literally takes the better part of a year.
That said, it can literally be the difference between life and death. Fighting insurance, while a huge PITA, is much better than a dead child. It’s just the sad reality we live in, in order to have checks notes poor health outcomes and healthcare quality tied to whatever your job (if you have one) happens to offer. 🦅🇺🇸🎆
Some great clinical advice here. As others have mentioned, staying calm is important as part of the process. A few things might help with that:
Focus on the problem and symptoms, not what might be. E.g., not “oh god are they dying???”, but instead their chest hurts when they breathe in, they sound a little out of breath, they do/don’t have a fever. Then work the problem in front of you. Practice bringing your mind back to what is observable.
Part of you, maybe unconsciously, may think that they’ll be safer if you’re worried about them. That if your brain is constantly on alert, gaming out problems, or otherwise figuring out what might happen that your family and friends will be safer. This is anxiety speaking, not love or reason. You do not need to be in a state of worry to love someone, or to take care of them. Working towards an understanding of that can help with your default state and help keep yourself and them more safe on a crisis.
My wife was just making fun of me yesterday to my doctor sister in law for that one time we were camping in Germany and I went all fast and furious and parked in front of the emergency gate of the hospital when my son got stung by a bee in the neck. I try to reason myself but that day my primal instinct kicked in stronger than I could ignore.
I don’t have any advice, but I just wanna say, I just think you are a lovely person that cares about family. I wish my parents even cared half as much 😞
