A New Tadpole!

Yes, a post about something other than Toad or Oracle! I hope you folks don’t mind, but I need to brag a little bit 🙂

My wife and I welcomed our son to this world on Tuesday night! My wife was extremely brave and did the whole thing without any sort of pain medication. Not that she had much choice – the labor process was so fast that any epidural wouldn’t have had time to be of any use. My best friend is an anesthesiologist, and I feel terrible for being involved in two drug-less births. But I think his profession can handle the hardship.

Anyways, we had a scare the next day. The doctors had taken a blood sample to check for a bacteria in our son’s system – very common as StrepB is found in just about everyone walking around these days. However, if found in a little one, it’s can be extremely dangerous. Well, that test came back ‘positive’ after 24 hours. The immediately put him on antibiotics at 4AM that morning, and took another sample.

We sat around and worried like crazy for a few hours (as most parents tend to do anyway) until our pediatrician came in to talk to us. Apparently there was a very good chance the test results were bogus. This proved to be true two days later, and we were able to come home all safe and sound Saturday morning.

This got me thinking –

Is a False Positive always better than a False Negative when it comes to testing?

My son is a bit more important to me than the software I sling – if there’s even a chance he might be sick, I want to take action. Testing is such an important part of any type of development process. While you may be able to get away with doing less than you should, if you find a problem AFTER the fact, it’s generally going to be much more expensive to fix than any time of money you saved by skimping on your testing.

A Quick Semi-Political Note…Sorry

I’ve been to this particular hospital more than a few times, and I always come away amazed how nice and professional their staff is – from the cleaning folks, to the nurses, to the doctors. While American medicine might be great for those who can afford it, I would hate to be in a situation where I couldn’t ensure my family could always receive such top-notch health care. I’m afraid I have started to take my level of access to health care for granted. If it’s ‘heartless’ to not grant in-state tuition to illegal aliens, why wouldn’t it be just as heartless to deny healthcare to those you can’t afford it?