Over the next few weeks, we'll be following a real GBO patient, Gio, from diagnosis all the way through treatment at Great Basin Orthopaedics. Be sure to check back for updates as we follow the journey, which is documented by his mother, Paige.
Appointment 1: May 27, 2020
The appointment wasn’t about me, but I sort of felt like it was. I had scheduled an appointment for my son Gio to have his ankle evaluated with Dr. Richard Hayes. It’s been four months since he first hurt it jumping off a step at our house during winter break. While it appeared to improve for a while, it just wasn’t getting better, even with lots of rest during this extended COVID no-sports period. The fact is, I wasn’t the one pushing to go to the doctor, my son was. I should have been paying more attention to the timeline and the injury persistence. In retrospect, I feel a whole lot of mommy guilt about that.
Gio and I arrived, masks on, and entered a waiting room with a few patients super spaced out. We had been given the option of waiting in our car, but with a giant tub of hand sanitizer and a sign reminding visitors to maintain six feet of distance, the waiting room gave us no cause for concern. We only had to wait a minute. We already had our masks on as the appointment scheduler had requested. Our check-in included a temperature check — we passed!
The medical assistant Laura took us to the exam room, and Dr. Hayes arrived shortly after. Dr. Hayes was Gio’s doctor when he got a stress fracture in his right foot playing soccer two years ago. He was his doctor again when he separated his shoulder, also during soccer. Hayes is also a fellowship trained foot and ankle specialist, so we felt sure he was the doctor to see for this persistent injury. He listened to Gio explain what had happened, and how it felt. He did some manipulation and pressure point checks to see what caused discomfort. Due to the length of time Gio has already been resting and certain pain points, he was pretty sure the ankle was not going to get better on its own. Dr. Hayes sent Gio down the hall for an in-office x-ray.
The x-ray showed nothing broken, so he advised an MRI to find out what was going on. While GBO has an in-office MRI, our insurance covered MRI at another facility, so the scheduler sent out a referral before we even left.