Rebecca Ramirez

Review of Cook Children's Medical Center

I took my 9 week old daughter to the ER here at Co...

I took my 9 week old daughter to the ER here at Cook's Children's under direction of my daughter's pediatrician as he did blood work on her earlier and said her white blood cell count was high. Mind you, she just had her first round of shots the day prior and her body was probably learning to fight what she was given. The nurse staff here at Cook's was the worst I had ever experienced. The first nurse that came in nonchalantly said to me that she would have to have a baseline IV put into her vein and would have to be given a catheter and then walked out of the room. My mother in law was in the room with me and we walked out of the ER room my daughter was being held in and told the nurses that we did not want a catheter put into my daughter. One nurse spoke up and seemed upset that we said that and said that a doctor would be in to see her shortly. A few moments later, that same nurse, along with another male nurse, came in to try to install the baseline IV into my daughter. The were digging through drawers, poking and prodding my daughter with all kinds of needles trying to look for a vein and couldn't find one. Before this my daughter was hungry but they would not let me feed her and so she was a bit dehydrated. They wouldn't take the needles out, instead they were digging around under her skin and she was screaming. The nurses left the room and I had my mother in law stay with her so I could go get my husband from the waiting room who was in there with my dad because I couldn't watch. My dad and husband go back to the room with my daughter where the nurses tried again to poke around at my daughter, still couldn't find her vein, and my daughter was left screaming in pain. My dad demanded that the nurses stop what they were doing as they were poking her over and over again and digging in her skin and they would not stop. My husband demanded my daughter's discharge papers as we felt she was not getting proper care and wanted to remove her from the torture she was receiving, only for the nurse at the front to tell us that she would be forced to report us to CPS if we left. Not wanting to have CPS called on me, I told the nurse that I would keep her there for care only if someone else besides the nurses installed her IV to draw her blood. She said she would get the lab techs, who were supposed to have done this in the first place. Once the lab techs came in, they had a vein finder, and the proper equipment and needles to draw her blood. It was done and over with in less than 5 minutes. They also came in and installed her catheter as well to draw a urine sample to ensure that she did not have UTI. Once they sampled her urine, they told us that they were going to culture it and run it to a lab to let us know her results. Once everything came back, turns out, nothing was wrong with her at all and they discharged her! All that hell, only to be told nothing was wrong and that it was probably the shots that elevated her count. That wasn't anything we didn't already know! All I can say about this place is rude staff, and all they want to do is hold you hostage and threaten CPS on you if you don't comply with them. Think twice before taking your child. I will never take my child here again.