Does the doctor always know best?

     I had a rather frustrating experience the past couple of days. Yesterday afternoon we took Teegan to his pediatrician because he had some green discharge around the trach site. I assumed it was infection, even though it was a rather bright green. The doctor thought it might have been bile, it was quite a technicolor green. For those who may not know, bile is stomach acid, so finding it around the trach site is rather odd. She suggested calling pulmonology and GI. By the time we got home it was 5 o'clock so I called this morning. The pulmonology nurse was quite surprised and suggested I call ENT. ENT was surprised as well, but knew that the office didn't have the diagnostic tools for this type of problem. She suggested I call GI (which was already on my to-do list) and take him to the ER if I see it again. Mind you, neither one of those nurses or doctors questioned the presence of bile on the trach site, even though it is an uncommon occurence. Now we come to the frustrating part of my story...GI. I left a message, since they never bother to answer the phone around there. The nurse called back, I gave her the same information that I left in the message, then said she would have to call me back. When she called back she said the doctor said it was likely infection and not a GI problem. Really? Over the phone, without ever seeing the discharge, even with another doctor suggesting it may be bile. A pediatrician who sees infection every day. A pediatrician who has seen my child more times in a month than the GI doctor has seen him in his entire life. Every other doctor of Teegan's has at some point asked my opinion. "Is this normal for him?" "Do you feel he needs an increase in meds?" His pulmonologist once asked me if his breathing was ok. His neurologist has told me that she has complete faith in my deciding when he needs a certain anti-seizure medication. His pediatrician said nobody knows if something is wrong better than I do. His ENT has asked me if I felt he needed to be hospitalized. This GI doctor...I felt completely dismissed by him. I'm smart, I research EVERYTHING, and I'm very pro-active about Teegan's care. I have to be. Nobody else is going to care as much about this patient as I do. Would you care to hear the absolute best part of today's debacle? The way Teegan's insurance is, we have to stay with this GI clinic. I can't even find a doctor that respects what I say as much as his other specialists do. Perhaps I will go back to school and get my nursing license. Maybe then he will listen to me. In the meantime, if I see this particular shade of green again we'll be headed straight to the emergency room. Hopefully he'll take an entire department full of doctors and nurses seriously.