Dr. John Brandon – pediatrician Kaiser partner. This doctors short lived part in this story basically “kicked-off” Evan’s troubles.
Evan was very young, like about 6 weeks when Evan started to shoot vomit. Evan was sitting in his baby chair and would gobble up his breast milk, then shoot it out fiercely like a fountain beyond his baby table, we brought Evan in to see our designated doctor. After our description of projectile vomit Brandon said it was “acid reflux. Soon after this it continued and Evan was losing weight, we went in again and saw Brandon’s colleague Dr. Eastman. Eastman looked at Brandon’s diagnosis and agreed. Evan’s symptom continued and he continued to lose weight. By next morning Evan was lethargic and looked horrible, we rushed him back and Brandon happened to be there again. He took one look at Evan and told us to go to Kaiser hospital. Now this event would never happen at CHOC or Rady’s, I know, I have been at both several times. At Kaiser you have a few doctors (who are partners) in the same facility, so they are under this “capitation” that gives them a bonus by saving Kaiser money. What they are really doing is creating either a competition and/or resentment between their doctors to see who can spend less than the other. Like less x-ray, ultra sounds, blood tests-whatever. Anytime I have been at CHOC they do an entire list of tests to eliminate any other causes of a symptom<This is the big difference between fast-food healthcare and Medicine. Today you can look up “projectile vomit””shooting vomit” whatever you choose and find Pyloric stenosis. It is fairly common, and a textbook repair. This didn’t happen at Kaiser. Evan had pyloric stenosis found in a simple ultra sound, something they were trying to avoid, but Evan was now 35% less of his birth weight and had what they called Severely Deranged Electrolytes< this is dangerous. His cheeks were sunken and he didn’t move, he looked like death was around the corner. They had to hydrate him 2 days before the procedure. This cause severe dehydration and made his brain shrink. We think this was the cause of Evan’s first seizure, and this was told to me by Evan’s surgeon. His brain shrank then swelled back after he received nourishment. So, Dr. John “hair plugs” Brandon started all of this. We left his care and got real lucky to find Dr. Louise Gordon. Not even Brandon was notified of Kaiser putting Evan into hospice, but this was my first experience in Kaiser’s “Capitation” – making doctors save money to receive bigger bonuses. Pyloric Stenosis made somewhat popular by Will Farrell who had this very young also.
Brandon resides in Laguna Beach, Cal