Grateful

Two weeks after leaving Sunrise, William was in even more pain than he had ever been. He had to sit up to sleep, and even then he didn't sleep well, and he wouldn't let us touch his stomach at all.  We had CPS calling us to set up their own medical exams for ALL of our kids, not just William.  They were also dropping by for random visits in their government car letting all of our neighbors know we were under investigation.

William's urologist, the one doctor I actually trusted out of all the doctors I'd seen at the hospitals, happened to be out of town when William was in so much pain.  His nurse advised us to take him back to the ER.  We knew we never wanted to go back to either Summerlin or Sunrise because all they did was treat us like criminals.  Their focus was not on what was wrong with William - it was on what we were doing wrong as parents.  We also didn't want to risk getting our kids taken away by Nevada CPS because William seemed to be even worse than he was after his second visit to the hospital.

The only other place I knew that treated trauma patients was Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake City.  I'm sure there were hospitals in between Las Vegas and Salt Lake that had trauma units, but I didn't want to go searching for which ones did, so I packed up a few things and drove William all the way to Salt Lake City to see why he was in so much pain.  At that point, I believed William's urologist when he told us that William had a giant blood clot that needed to shrink, so I was hoping Primary Children's would check him out and give me a stronger medicine to take care of his pain.

At first I was terrified that Primary Children's would be suspicious of me too.  I was scared to answer too many questions.  I was quite distrusting of medical professionals after our previous hospital visit.  When they asked why I came all the way to Salt Lake, I told them we were staying with my parents in Utah, and we were told by his nurse to take him to the ER.  This is actually true.  We were staying with my parents for the weekend, but I did not tell the hospital that my parents lived in southern Utah - four hours away. We were actually closer to Sunrise from my parents house.

But the way this hospital works is so amazing.  All departments got involved and worked together to figure out a diagnosis.  They kept asking me what his diagnosis was in Las Vegas, and they would give me funny looks every time I told them what it was.  After about two or three hours of waiting, the ER doctor came in to tell me that they thought William might have cancer on his kidney.  I was shocked.  That was not was I was expecting to hear at all.  He told me they were going to get oncology involved, and I had to ask him what oncology was.  He said they were the cancer doctors.

It was one of the surgeons who recognized the kidney tumor.  He had seen it before.  See what great things can be done when all of the different departments at hospitals cooperate with each other to find solutions to problems?  In Las Vegas, the different departments would all contradict each other, and no one would ever tell us which department was actually in charge.  I don't think they even knew.

But I'm grateful that Summerlin and Sunrise are disorganized disasters.  It lead us to where we needed to be.  William's tumor got a little out of control by the time it was diagnosed.  His visit to Sunrise in November was the start of the cancer, so it went undiagnosed for three months.  Because his tumor had grown so rapidly, Primary's decided to shrink it for six weeks before taking it out surgically.  He just had his sixth week of treatment, so next week they will decide if he's ready for surgery.  And every week since his diagnosis I see him getting better and better.  It's so amazing.

Primary's asked if we wanted to transfer his remaining treatments to Las Vegas, and we said no.  We immediately started working on moving to Utah to be closer to the hospital.  We moved the Spanish Fork last week, and we have really liked it so far.

Some people have asked us if we are going to sue Summerlin and Sunrise.  I don't know yet.  Kevin's dad works as a medical expert for a malpractice law firm, and they want our case.  They told us to call them when we are ready.  Kevin wants those two hospitals held accountable so they won't do this to another unsuspecting family - they can't just call CPS every time they make a mistake and a child ends up back in the hospital.  Sadly a civil suit is the only way to have the hospitals investigated.  I'm not sure how I feel, but I'm mostly leaning towards letting it go.  We'll make a decision after William is completely finished with his treatments.