Medical Emergencies

[verum71]

Frustrated today and yesterday for sure.  I drop my 15 y/o daughter off at school on Mondays.  Monday evening around 5:30, I get a message from BPDx in Our Family Wizard saying that our daughter was having heart palpitations at school and took her to an emergency clinic where they proceeded to do an EKG, an echocardiogram, and ultrasound, and some blood work.  At the end of the message she stated that "(daughter) did not want anyone else at the hospital with her today and asked that I (BPDx) wait until we were done before notifying you ... I respected her need for privacy on this."  .  So ... they ran to the ER and decided that it was important for me to know until like 6 or 7 hours later.  I use the therm "they" very loosely because I don't believe that my daughter had anything to do or say with letting me know 6 or 7 hours later. 
I followed up with the school today and I am looking in to why no one from the school or the nurse's office notified me that she went out sick.  The person that I talked to said that it it normal procedure to contact one parent because they go on the assumption that the parent that gets the call would automatically let the other parent know right away that there was an emergency.  The good news is that I made the decision at the start of the year to reach out to her new school and discuss with them the co-parenting issues that I have had in the past and that i need to be informed because i can't rely on getting important information from my BPDx - I went back and found the email that i sent in August and attached the new email to the old one. 

I guess the last thing that I would say about this event is that I have run into this line of reasoning or logic many times from my BPDx lately - that "I (BPDx) didn't tell you because I want to respect (daughter's) privacy" - an attempt to shift or deflect my BPDx's decision on to our daughter.  If I push to be involved and informed, I "don't respect her privacy". 

This has been a MAJOR problem in years past and I have had to put court orders in place to demand Our Family Wizard as a communication tool.  I also struggled to get my kids into counseling (BPDx didn't want it) and have had a judge order that she needed to follow through with recommendations or give me the final say as her legal guardian.  Where I am struggling right now is whether or not staying informed about medical concerns is a legal battle to pick and choose.  Clearly just sending a message to her saying "you need to keep me informed" doesn't matter to her - if it did, she would have messaged me before she picked her and took her to the emergency clinic.  Any feedback would be greatly appreciated

[BeautifulCrazy]

Just a bunch of thoughts here.....
Policy at schools/ daycares/ sports teams I've been involved with the past decade, is that if something is wrong they call the child's primary contact or parent first. Then continue through the list until they reach someone. It isn't their job to do anything else except find a person to hand off responsibility for the child to. Unless your dd is in a very small school where everyone knows everybody and their business, they aren't very likely to inform you just because "you can't rely on your ex to do it".  In my opinion, it isn't very reasonable to expect them to. Compensating for your BPDx isn't their job, and it isn't their problem.
Were you the primary contact and got skipped over somehow? That would be something worth addressing with the school.
The whole manipulation about "respecting privacy" sounds infuriating but is it worth starting something with your BPDx? I'm thinking your daughter is probably old enough that you could let her know that you'd like to be informed if something serious should arise, even if you aren't the parent who is there in the moment? Perhaps you could stop that whole privacy thing by mentioning it to dd as well. "I understand you might not always want me there, and I respect that, but I'd like to be kept informed about your health and safety because I love you and worry about you. Just keep me in the loop when things are going on, okay?" 

I'm wondering too, if maybe you weren't just successfully baited by your ex.
Your dd left school unwell, with a parent, after a phone call home. She didn't leave in an ambulance. (I'm not minimizing. I can see that it might have been serious and caused some worry.) If this had happened to one of my kids on their dad's parenting time, they wouldn't have bothered to contact me unless the situation became very serious. Unless it is an actual emergency, or there is something I can do, what would be the point? (I have full custody and am responsible for medical decisions)
Are you worried that your ex might not inform you in the case of an actual emergency?  Were your rights or duties somehow circumvented? Is your ex not allowed to make medical decisions? Is she responsible to consult you first about medical care?
It sounds like she did keep you informed, not in as timely a manner as you would have liked, and not in a very considerate and respectful way either, but she did fulfil basic obligations.

I know from experience that going to court about anything of this nature doesn't get you more likelihood of cooperation, nor does it give you any method of enforcing it.  You've done the worst of it and survived the long haul and only have a few years left anyway...
My advice would be to focus on your relationship with dd and ignore this crummy behavior from your ex. If you can't already, it is only a short time until you can leave BPDx outside of most communication and arrangements about your parenting time and keep it just between you and dd. 

[Associate of Daniel]

I think Beautiful Crazy is right regarding the school's responsibility regarding emergency contact procedures. I do wonder though, if the school should have sent you an email describing what had happened at the school and what action they had taken.

My heart just sank when I read your post Verum71.  This is what I have dealt with for so long.  UNPD exH would send me emails saying, "Ds doesn't want you there.  He is uncomfortable having you there."  etc..

When ds was younger there was really nothing I could do about it.  Often I would go to whatever the activity was anyway and just stay out of the way.  That way ds knew that I cared and was interested but that I also wasn't there to cause him any discomfort.

Now that he's older (15), if something happens that I find out about later, I will talk with ds about it, saying that if I'd known it was going to happen, or that it was happening,  I would have been there.  I don't bother pulling uNPD exH up about the fact that he should have told me and should have allowed me to be Ds's mum.  He'd just do it all the more.  He's not going to do the right thing.

It hurts like Billyo.   It is so painful not being allowed to fulfil the parental role, because the other parent is preventing you from doing so. Pds have no understanding that the mundane stuff and horrible stuff of doctors appointments, weekly sports games and hospital visits, are such wonderful privileges for parents and that we want to do it.  They tend to use these things as power plays instead.

One thing you might be able to do is have your name as a contact at your daughter's dentist, optometrist, gp etc, so that if your ex makes appointments for your daughter, the clinics inform you beforehand of the appointments.  You can then choose to go to the appointment or speak to the doctor afterwards to get a first hand account of their findings and procedures during the appointments.

This may not work though, now that your daughter is 15.  And in my country, the government in its all knowing "wisdom" automatically removes parents from their 14 year old children's medical records.  So we can no longer access their medicare files.  Yet we still have to pay for, arrange, and take our kids to these appointments.  (Don't get me started...)

I hope your daughter is ok.   And I hope you can have an open conversation with her about what must have been a rather scary time for her.  Do tell her that if you had known it was happening, you would have been there.  But also tell her that her mum said that she (your daughter) didn't want you there.  Chances are that your daughter said no such thing to her mother.

You are right to consider which battles to pick.  Maybe this one is best left alone.  But your daughter is of an age now that you can have more open conversations with her about the family dynamic.  That could be the work around you need to be able to be kept in the loop. 

I don't know if I'm making much sense.  Sorry.

AOD

[xredshoesx]

a different perspective.

is it possible your daughter called her mother to come get her without the school being involved at all?  that's pretty common in my experience and it's lead to huge problems like you have described and worse.  cell phones are both a curse and a blessing at the same time.

[Poison Ivy]

I echo the comments above, especially the suggestion that you say this to your child: "I understand you might not always want me there, and I respect that, but I'd like to be kept informed about your health and safety because I love you and worry about you. Just keep me in the loop when things are going on, okay?"

[verum71]

Thanks for all of the feedback on this.  My feeling is that my daughter probably had nothing to do with the decision to not tell me until later.  I followed up with the school and asked that they keep me in the loop on things like this in the future.  One of the things that I have to realize is that now that she is older, there are some conversations that I can have with her.  She is coming over tonight and I will chat with her about it.

On a positive note, she is feeling better 

[Penny Lane]

Sorry about all this.

It is very scary to find out that your child was in pain and you didn't even know!

It is also very frustrating to know that the person "in charge" of that child's wellbeing is erratic and makes bad decisions. And to know that you're being cut out of those decisions that you should be a part of.

If your gut is telling you that your daughter wasn't part of the decision, then that's probably right.

So, the question is what should you do?

I'm kind of thinking out out here. The first thing to do is assess how serious this is. For us, this would be really serious. My husband's ex makes incredibly bad decisions around health care. So he literally cannot let her go to an appointment without him. By that I mean every time she has, something really bad has happened, like she has pulled one of the kids out of a course of treatment or taken DH's information off the account so it's really difficult for him to even learn anything from doctors.

For you, maybe it's less dire. Maybe this is something you can let go because this isn't one of your ex's worst areas of behavior. Maybe you can call the doctors offices and just confirm. I don't know. I would err on the side of, you need all your kids' medical information.

I don't think you can do anything that is a sure thing to prevent this from happening again. You have some options of things you could do to try:

1. I agree with the others that it's not the school's responsibility to notify you. But I am hopeful that once you've asked, they'll do so.

2. I do think you can put it to your daughter, can she please let you know if she has a major medical thing on her mom's time? My stepkids are younger than her and they

3. I normally advocate NOT asking the ex to do anything, because it doesn't accomplish much and it just leaves more room for argument. But in this case the issue is so important I don't think it would be out of line to send a note saying "please inform me of all medical issues as soon as they happen per the order" (if the order applies, and then you can cite it).

4. If you're still paying a lawyer, you could have your lawyer send a note to her lawyer.

The good news is that your daughter is old enough to tell you what the doctor said. Like I said, you don't have a lot of great options here. Just know that others are right there with you, and it sucks, and you're not doing anything wrong.