The complaint

We’re going to be lodging a complaint against the hospital if something incredible doesn’t happen relatively soon. After Alex’s dental appointment on Wednesday, he had five teeth pulled, five fillings, a crown, and a root canal.

And we were told repeatedly that there was no way to tell for sure if Alex was in any pain, dentists didn’t see anything concerning in a very brief look at Alex’s mouth, and putting him under for a quick exam didn’t seem to be worth the risk of anesthesia. And after they discovered he had major problems (via x-ray), they still made us wait two weeks to get the teeth fixed.

We pushed many times to get him seen sooner, trying to tell them that clearly something was wrong, but Alex can’t say he’s in pain, so they feel confident that not helping Alex won’t actually get them in any trouble. It’s so very easy to just ignore a suffering child when his mother claims he’s in pain. Ignore the fact that she has had an uncanny ability to tell when something is wrong:

• She diagnosed Alex’s seizures before a doctor.
• She diagnosed infantile spasms when the doctor continually assured us there was nothing to worry about, up until they’d been going on so long that he had no choice but to double-check.
• She diagnosed the autism which Asante lied about and continually tried to deny, until we forced them to get an independent evaluation from a specialist who told us that within a few minutes she felt he was likely autistic.
• She discovered his first major tooth problem when dentists were sure there was nothing to worry about.
• She discovered Alex’s staph infection when he was in his first group home.

And now she’s discovered his second major tooth problem — and even with pushing and prodding they assured us they wouldn’t risk an unnecessary anesthesia.

(For the record, I believe she was wrong once, and that was with a concern she brought up and let go after talking with the doctor for a while about it)

And the “residential specialist” whom we tried to get to help us push for Alex’s rights just stood by with a condescending smugness that very clearly told us what he thought about a stay-at-home mom diagnosing major dental problems.

I’m thoroughly disgusted with all parties involved except my wife’s. She has once again proven to be the only person willing to actually work to get Alex the help he quite obviously needed.