The Emergency Room

It was our normal Thursday afternoon. I had just gotten back from work, and we were all trooping in the front door. Jacob had to sit in the naughty chair because he wouldn’t hold my hand in the parking lot. During all the commotion of getting everyone in the door and sitting down to do homework, Jacob was flailing around in his chair (mind you a child-sized chair) and fell off of it. He started to scream and I walked over with the intention of telling him to knock it off and just sit still, when I noticed the blood.

Well, he somehow managed to cut his ear while falling off the chair (I still can’t figure out exactly how, but there was nothing but him the chair and the wall). And now he is bleeding at a steady gush from the top of his left ear and I’m not quite certain but it may have cut through. Well I grabbed a kitchen towel and scooped up the screaming Jacob. Ran outside and stopped Mark from driving to work, jumped in with Jacob and drove to the emergency room.

(At this point please note what I did not do. I did not calmly pack a bag with snacks, crayons, books and other assorted distractions. This is important because it comes up later.)

It just so happens that this is a busy Thursday afternoon at my local Kaiser emergency room. It’s only a mile and a half away so we get there relatively quickly. Once Jacob calmed down enough to know where we were going, he emphatically declared he did NOT want to go to see the doctor (we’ve been to the emergency room before). Well, the parking lot was full so we had to go park in the parking garage and then walk through the other side of the hospital with a kitchen towel on his head to get to the emergency room. By this time he isn’t screaming, but he isn’t happy. We get to the front desk and they take his card and tell us to have a seat.

So then the waiting begins. The two and a half hours of waiting. Jacob tries whining. Surely I will feel sorry for him and take him home. Then he tries to reason with me. Then the fun begins.

He declares quite loudly that he has to go to the bathroom. We get up and go to the bathroom in the emergency room, but he doesn’t want that bathroom, he wants to go down the hall and find one “someplace else”. No. (We have to be here when they call his name or we go back to the bottom of the not-very-important list.)

Then he wants to go for a walk. No we can’t do that either.

Now, you have to understand that Jacob only has one volume setting and it’s loud. So all of the following conversations EVERYBODY in the crowded emergency room can hear.

“If you don’t take me home, I’m going to call the police and they will come and put you in jail.”
“hmm jail huh?, well if I’m in jail who is going go cook your food?”
“Daddy will. He can make ice cream and stuff”
“Oh, well, okay, but who will do the laundry?”
“Oh Anarosa can reach, she’ll do it.”
“Well you seem to have this all figured out.”
“Yes, so go to jail!”

When that didn’t work, he decided to very loudly discuss all of the private parts that he happens to know the correct names of, and everyone he knows who has one!

Next, we try the bathroom excuse again and again, until people in the “audience” actually start to giggle every time he declares he has to “go.”

We discuss me selling him to pirates and whether or not he would enjoy swabbing the decks or walking the planks.

He found a blond girl to talk to and actually broke down in tears when her mother returned and sat next to her.

My favorite person of the whole night was the fifty-something-year-old man, who actually got down on the floor and blew little pieces of paper with Jacob, across the floor in a race.

After about an hour and a half Jacob actually stood up on his chair, put his hands on his hips and yelled “I WANT TO GO HOME NOW!” to which several people in the waiting room answered back “me too”.

Once we finally get to see the triage nurse, she is totally unimpressed with his cut ear. She doesn’t really think he’ll need stitches, well maybe one, but if I really want to, she can get me an appointment in two hours at the minor injury clinic. By this time Jacob is as uncooperative as he can be and will not for love or money or stickers let her take his blood pressure and temperature.

So we drive back home, still covered in blood to wait an additional two hours to go back. I however, use this time to feed Mr. Grumpy and pack a diaper bag with about two hours worth of super hero toys, snacks, crayons and even considered taking the dvd player (just in case). We get back to the hospital and get in to see the minor injury doctor. Who was totally not impressed with the ER nurse, who didn’t think we would need stitches. He did need stitches, three of them to be exact. (not his personal record) But we had to wrap him up and hold him down to get the stitches in. He was in a much better mood for the second visit, but was not very pleased with getting the stitches in. And after all this we had to stop on the way out to get him an antibiotic, because that cough and cold he had was really an ear infection.

So we survived our latest trip to the ER. But I seriously think it’s Mark’s turn to do this next time one of the kids has to go!