I have to share a bad experience I had at Linc Care North a couple of weeks ago, in hopes to prevent others from seeing this horrible doctor.
On Sunday of that week I had a cough and took a 3 hour nap when my boys had theirs. I thought I was just tired from being a working single mom who is always on the run and had just gotten back from a business trip. Not so. The next day at work it turned into a cold/flu thing, so I left early. From there I got worse and worse. I couldn't get out of bed all day Tuesday and by that evening realized I was not going to get over this on my own--my symptoms were exactly what I had when I had walking pneumonia a few years ago. I actually felt faint, couldn't eat, and couldn't stay awake for more than an hour here or there. So that night my mom agreed to drive me to an urgent care center in Lincoln because I truly felt too sick to drive. We noticed Lk had a minor cough and thought it might be a good idea to have him looked at as long as we were going.
This turned out to be a colossal mistake.
We got to Linc Care around 7pm and were prepared for the one hour wait, having brought snacks and milk and a couple of toys for Lk (I won't let my twins play with toys at the dr's office because other sick kids have been touching them--a good tip I learned from my day care lady.)
At 7:45, a nurse named Kara, who wore a tongue stud the size of a small golf ball, came out with a pulse oximeter and said that Lk sounded terrible, she could hear him coughing, and wanted to check his oxygen there in the waiting room. I thought it was a little odd that we didn't get called back to see the doctor, but I said fine, and she approached Lk.
Well, Lk would have none of it, not surprisingly. He HATES nurses, doctors, needles, and all medical paraphernalia. Since the age of 8 months, he cries from the moment we enter the building of his pediatrician until he's strapped back in his car seat to go home again. On this night, he did great while in the waiting room at Linc Care. In fact everyone else in there was smiling at him and telling me how cute and well behaved he is. But once that tongue-studded nurse approached him with the machine, he shrieked like she was Jack Nicholson coming at him with a butcher knife.
The nurse, once she got the "reading," said "It's not good!" and ran back to consult with the doctor, Dr. Jeffrey Fraser. A minute later, she ran back out to us and announced to me and the entire waiting room that Lk's oxygen was registering at 81% (dangerously low), that he needed to go to the Emergency Room to be hooked up to oxygen immediately and that she "could tell" he had a fever (despite not taking his temperature) because his cheeks were red (they were red because his daycare doesn't keep it humid enough and it was due to dry skin that I continuously care for with Aquafor). I tried explaining this to her, that he had no fever and was breathing just fine. I said we were next in line to see the doctor and that I still needed to be treated, and we would wait for that.
She literally DEMANDED that we leave for the ER, more than implying that if I did not, I was a bad mom who was putting herself before her dying son! She went on to say that she has a son Lk's age who ended up with RSV, so that was how she "knew" that Lk had RSV and could die right there. I'm not joking here.
At that point, despite my instinct that Lk was okay, my mom, Lk, and I rushed to the ER all the way across town. I had visions of him hooked up to an oxygen tank as I wept over his dying form. We raced like mad to get there.
Once at St. E's, we went to the ambulance entrance and I rushed in with Lk, shouting that he had RSV and not enough oxygen. The triage nurses scrambled to hook him up to their own pulse oximeter, and the reading came back...97% oxygen, and shock of all shock, no fever. The head triage nurse was very nice. She rolled her eyes and said that Linc Care has trouble with their machines all the time, they are not accurate, that you can't diagnose a fever by red cheeks, that Lk would not be screaming so loudly if he could not breathe, and basically that he has a better and stronger set of lungs than the rest of us combined. Not only was Lk not dying, he probably didn't even need to see a doctor.
Irritated but relieved, I called Linc Care and asked if we could get our original place back in line. She said she would squeeze us in next. It was now 8:30 as we arrived back there. Past Lk's bed time, and he was as mad as a swatted hornet this time in the waiting room. I was feeling absolutely miserable and just put my head in my hand as he laid down in the middle of the floor and shrieked.
One might read this and wonder why I'm a glutton for punishment by returning to Linc Care. Well, it's like this. I needed an antibiotic. I had not been able to hug or kiss my kids since Sunday for fear of being contagious. I had not been able to get out of bed for a couple of days and needed to go back to work. I don't have faith in doctors or nurses, no! But I do have faith in pills.
Finally we were called back to a room, and Lk was so worked up that he was still crying. Nothing would console him by then, and frankly I was too weary to try to quiet him. When the doctor came in, I thought, At last! At last we will get treated and be out of here with our prescriptions. Instead, this Dr. Fraser burst in and yelled, "Get that child out of here! He's too loud!" My mom, who has a saintly sweet and calm demeanor, and it takes a lot for people to rile her, was shocked, and said, "This child is here to be treated. We need you to look at him!"
Dr. Fraser entered with nurse Kara obsequiously behind him, and said that he had just called the head triage nurse at St. E's, that I was a liar (I'm not exaggerating here) because their machines worked just fine, that I just didn't want to be treated at St. E's because my copay there would be higher (?!), that I had gone against his orders by returning to the clinic, and that his recommendation that Lk return to the hospital still stood, end of story.
He did agree to see me if Mom took Lk out to the car, which she did, but then he left and did not return. A long time later I poked my head out the door, and he was standing around writing on a notepad, and said there were people in front me and it would be at least another half hour. Uhm... I had been promised over the phone that we would be next or we would not have returned. It was now 9:10pm. We'd been there over 2 hours. I could not leave Lk and my mom in the car on a sub-zero night (it was like -5 degrees out) for another half hour. Plus it was painfully obvious Dr. Asshole had no intention of ever treating me, he just planned to leave me there until I finally left, so I did, without being treated, as sick as I was.
Lk never did need to see a doctor, he was perfectly fine. I was so ill I couldn't even get of bed for 2 more days to see another doctor. Finally by Thursday I drove to an urgent care center in Omaha because by then I couldn't even take in food nor fluids. I was diagnosed with a severe respiratory tract infection and given an antibiotic, so by Saturday I could finally get out of bed and eat a little bit. I missed a whole week of work.
Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in bed seething about how egotistical and assinine this Dr. Fraser was. I still cannot believe the treatment we received. I called the head nurse at St. E's and she told me that she too thought Dr. Fraser was an egotisitical ass (she couched it in more diplomatic terms), that he showed no concern at all for us, he only wanted to get out us of of the clinic because the waiting room was packed, that she said nothing against me to him and in fact told him that Lk was fine.
The next day I filed a complaint with the physician's network and was able to reach the woman who coordinates Linc Care, and she has promised me she will have a meeting with he and the staff about what poor protocol they showed by refusing us treatment. I called twice to follow up and make sure she did so, and she's said she'll call me Monday and let me know everything that happened.
I really, really hope others won't have to go through what we did, and if any of you out there got here by googling Dr. Fraser, you've been fair-warned. I'm still so furious thinking about the way he treated us.
And, on a side note, curious how that spacy nurse with the huge tongue stud is able to eat with a golf ball in the middle of her mouth.
