batinthebelfry (batinthebelfry) wrote in bad_service,
batinthebelfry
batinthebelfry
bad_service

Quest Diagnostics is stupid.

Reading the horror stories about bad bloodwork, I guess I really shouldn't be too surprised at the awful experience my brother had at Quest Diagnostics the other day.

My two-year-old little brother got a weird-looking red lump on his stomach, like an enormous bee sting. We took him to the doctor almost immediately, who told us that it was either Lyme or he was allergic to something that had stung him.

He sent us over to Quest Diagnostics for some bloodwork, which made my mom a little leery since the one near our house always seems to be overcrowded and understaffed, with pretty poor service overall. Since it's the only place our insurance will cover, we made the trip there with my brother, who had calmed down by then.

It was pretty empty when we got there, thankfully, and the secretary was pretty short with us but not extremely unpleasant. I stayed in the front room (I'm petrified of needles, even when they're not directed at me, lol) while my mom went with my brother to the back room.

Now, I'm not really sure what happened next since I wasn't with my mom, but she told me that the lady was very nervous and even dropped the needle while she was trying to draw blood-- my brother wasn't squirming or anything, as my mom was distracting him with toys. My mom was on one side of him and the lady was on the other.

Finally she finished drawing blood and pulled down his sleeve, and we left without any incident. My brother had been surprisingly well-behaved up until now, even with the needles. So we packed him up in the car and headed home, and pretty soon after we pulled out of the lot he started screaming. Blood-curdling, red-faced screams of pain, completely out of the blue. I turned around to try to comfort him from the front seat, seeing that he was clutching his arm and wailing.

So I pushed up his sleeve to see if anything was wrong, and lo and behold:

They had left the tourniquet on my two-year-old brother's arm.

It was an awful shade of blue, and I turned back to my mom to tell her what happened. We got back inside pretty quickly, where my mom raised all kinds of hell with every doctor she could find (the lady who had done his bloodwork was gone, for some reason). They took it off quickly and were totally apologetic, though one incredibly nice doctor told her honestly that he could have lost his arm because of their stupid mistake. He promised her that they'd take action, which didn't really calm any of us down.

BUT SERIOUSLY. HOW DO YOU FORGET A TOURNIQUET ON A 2-YEAR-OLD? D:

ps. He doesn't have Lyme, though they didn't even mention the incident when they left a message yesterday.
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