Saturday, June 20, 2009

Why is it always when you look like a homeless bum?

Why is that when you need to go to the ER? Why not when you're freshly showered and have good hair and have brushed your teeth?

Yesterday afternoon I was about to get in the shower when screaming commenced. It wasn't the normal screaming that I've learned to tune out. This was panicked screaming.

I threw the stinky, mismatched gym clothes (including the electric green pants that sometimes create the appearance of camel-toe) back on that I had just taken off and came out to find Liam covered in blood and screaming. The blood was coming from somewhere on his head, but there was just so much I couldn't find the source. I grabbed a towel and got the kids in the van as quickly as I could. I realized I left my keys inside, and on my way back into the garage Ben starts screaming that Liam is now bleeding from his eyes. I look into the van from the garage door (about 10 feet away) and it does in fact look like his eyes are bleeding.

So, I grab the phone and call 911. By the time the operator answered I was back at the van and realized that the blood was not coming from his eyes--there was just so much blood gushing from his head that it was now spilling down the front of his face as well as pouring down his back. I apologized to the operator and told her we didn't need an ambulance after all.



We got to the ER about 10 minutes later. At this point I was able to piece together the bits from all three kids and figured out that Liam was outside and hit his head on the edge of the vent for our gas fireplace (That secret portal directly to hell I posted a picture of ).

Anyway, they got us in to the nurse pretty quickly, but he doesn't think it's any big deal and sends us out to wait.

And wait we did. For four hours. Apparently adults with sore throats and runny noses trump blood soaked four year-olds with open head wounds.

Finally we get to see the doctor. Doctor Pye.

Dr. Pye obviously has some sort of congenital malformation. He has no neck (his shoulders are literally by his ears), short little arms and no thumbs. And he's probably only 5 feet tall at most.

Internets, you know that if anyone was going to get the doctor with no thumbs it would be me.

Anyway, he turned out to be a fabulous doctor. First he went out and ripped the nurse a new one for not sending us right back to him when we got there four hours previously. We clearly stated to the nurse Liam's heart history, and his file clearly denotes that he is to be given prophylactic antibiotics as soon as possible with any sort of deep wound. Also, there is a risk for him to have PVCs (Premature Ventricular Complexes) with that sort of trauma and blood loss. Also, we had to wait so long that the blood had coagulated into a big clot, so the doctor had to pull it out in order to stitch it up, which caused lots of screaming and additional bleeding from Liam--all which could have been avoided if the wound was still fresh.

Then, as he was stitching him up, Liam (who had been staring hard at him the whole time) says, "Hey, are you a troll?"

Dr. Pye answers, "Yes, I'm half troll! How did you know?"

So, awesome doctor. Also? He was surprisingly adept at suturing, considering he has no thumbs.

And when I finally got home late yesterday evening I realized that I'd spent the day at the hospital without a bra. Nice.

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