Being your child's advocate during a medical crisis

Mickey Guisewite, Parent WIth A Purpose, shares advice for parents on how crucial it is to be an advocate for your child during a medical emergency
Pediatric Cancer Advice | Importance Of Being Your Child's Advocate
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Being your child's advocate during a medical crisis

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Within days of finding out that our son had cancer, I realized that it was critical for my husband and me to become his advocates and know everything we possibly could. The doctor knows everything about his medical treatment, but he's not there all the time. My husband and I were there 24/7 with our son. And so, his treatment plan was very complicated and there were all sorts of medications that he was on. The doctor could kind of check in and see how he was doing, but I was the one who was there all day, who could see if he was having a side effect from a drug, who could notice if there was something subtle that was different from yesterday. And I reported all of that to him, and he really needed that information. The other reason it was extremely important to be our son's advocate was, again, that we were the ones that were there all the time. Nurse shifts change and different personnel come in and your doctor isn't always there; he has colleagues that come in and see the child. There's room for error and I watched like a hawk. I, before, didn't know nothing about cancer and this disease but soon got to know all the drugs, what the interactions would be, what his treatment schedule was, what time he was supposed to get something, and I would ask questions. If he was supposed to be getting one medication, I knew he needed a particular anti-nausea medication, and a nurse once came in with the wrong medication. And I said this anti-nausea medication isn't the one that works and he's still going to be really sick. And it was just a little error that she didn't know about, information that hadn't gotten past on. I asked question after question after question. You should never be afraid to ask questions. And in the end, you're all on the same team. Everybody at the hospital wants your child to get well. And I think that my husband and I worked really hard to make that happen.

Mickey Guisewite, Parent WIth A Purpose, shares advice for parents on how crucial it is to be an advocate for your child during a medical emergency

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Mickey Guisewite

Parent with a Purpose

Mickey Guisewite is a former advertising executive and syndicated newspaper columnist who started The Bottomless Toy Chest after her son successfully completed cancer treatment. The Bottomless Toy Chest is a nonprofit organization devoted to delivering toys, crafts and hands-on activities to hospitalized pediatric cancer patients. Mickey lives at home with her husband, son, daughter, two dogs, two cats and two turtles. When she’s not delivering toys to sick kids, she’s at home trying to find a tiny space on the couch among her two-legged and four-legged family members. 

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