are, of course, condemned to repeat it. This is particularly true in high school, but perhaps more applicable to algebra. Anyway, the gods have got it in for me this week. First I was wrong about the signing of the year. Now I am at least partially wrong about emergency rooms. Partially.
It was the Austinator, naturally. An old friend told me when my first child was about a year old that I would be lucky if I only took him to the ER once in his formative years. This was Austin's second trip in 13 years. Ergo, he's pushing me to the edge of my maternal sanity. The first was the infamous bicycle incident when he was 7, in which he drove his bike into a mail box, sailed over the handle bars, landing in a blackberry bush and coming out with a knot the size of a super bouncy ball on his forehead. Somehow I managed to get him (wailing and bleeding and slobbering), the bike and the dog back home and then to the ER to check that knot. Which was NOT a concussion. Everything else was bandaid-able.
But not last Tuesday.
Last Tuesday, May the 15th, in the year of our lord 2007, our family suffered its first fracture. OK, so that's technically not quite true, since Katie mysteriously broke her collar bone when she was a toddler - I still don't know how that happened. I suspect it had something to do with her love of climbing up things and jumping off them. I still have a hard time keeping her grounded. But this was our first major sports injury which, in 15 or so years of soccering, is a pretty good record, considering.
But I digress.
They were big, but they weren't that skilled, these hell children from Carpenter. So that meant they relied on their physical abilities to win balls. With slide tackles, which Austin deftly jumped over; elbows to the neck, face and torso, which he fended off; and hip checks. Hip checks, as in hockey. And one particularly demonic psycho-player hip checked my baby boy. Really hard. Austin didn't bounce right up this time. I yelled at the referee with a complete lack of abandon to do something about the fouls, and my baby was still lying there. The whistle blew for the end of the half and he was still down, but now his coach was with him. Eventually he got up so I thought, he's going to be ok, but I went to check on him anyway. And he's walking toward me holding his little hand up with his face all scrunched up, almost crying but trying to be tough and he says 'I can't close my fingers.'
So, of course, I calmly and collectedly escorted him to the car and calmly and collectively drove to the ER. No, not really, I think I yelled at some people to get out of our way and I drove past a policeman doing 60 in a 35 mph zone (but he looked the other way, thank you traffic gods). And I know my hands hurt the next day because I was hanging on to the steering wheel so hard. But I'm digressing again. We got there and for the first time ever the lobby was completely empty. All we had to do was fill out paperwork (which gets on my tits - what do they do if you're unconscious? dying? have a mangled limb hanging off your body? do you STILL have to fill out the paperwork before you can be seen?). And we got sent back to the non-emergency care section, which also angered me. Just what constitutes an emergency??? We sat there for a while, Austin grimacing and looking pale and me saying 'just breathe. just breathe in and out' like he was in labor or something, and Josie needing to go to the bathroom and Heely around the halls. We wheeled down for some X-rays. Josie went to the bathroom again. A fellow soccer parent who is also a doctor stuck his head in to say he looked at the x-ray and it looked ok to him. A very nice physician's assistant examined Austin and the x-ray, pronounced it a soft tissue injury that needed a splint and left to get said splint. She returned a few minutes later to say oops, it is indeed broken and showed us on the x-ray exactly where. We will need to see an orthopod in the next 5-7 days (!! and I took that at face value, thinking they will be angry when I call them tomorrow!) and we will get that splint on now. Again, she goes to get the splint or play solitaire on her computer or something. A very nice nurse comes in and asks Austin how long it's been since he ate. She's got some pain medication for him so she suggests a soft drink to go with, in case it makes him nauseous. I ask her what she's giving him and she says Tylenol-3. She then turns to Josie with the pill wrapper in her hand and asks if she wants something as well. As God is my witness, I thought she was offering my daughter a hit of Tylenol-3. Austin and Josie both think this is hilarious, and the nurse is looking at me like I'm not quite sane and DHS ought to be called.
And then the rest of the team showed up.
Well, ok, not the whole team, but his four best buds Brandon, Marcus, Caleb and Cody. And their parents. And both coaches. And I have never been so glad to see these people in my life. It was just such a nice thing to do. I try to downplay hospital/doctor visits as much as possible, trying to give my kids the impression that whatever it is, it's no big deal because kids (and moms) take tiny pieces of information and imagine the worst possible scenario, and that Austin, he just gets ideas in his head sometimes. I've always tried to keep our medical party small, usually just me and whoever needs to be seen. Tuesday, we're having a pep rally in Curtain One.
It was nice to know they cared. Thanks, guys. And big ups/thanks to the ER staff who put up with our little pep rally.
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