OK, technically we were out of the ER by midnight (it was 12:00 when I
turned on my cellphone after using the bathroom on the way out of the
hospital), but I figured it would make a good subject line. :)
Sometime before 4PM yesterday afternoon, Catherine poked Tommy in the
eye. She didn't mean to hurt him; he does all sorts of things to her
that result in temporary red marks and he doesn't mean anything by
them. This was Catherine's second wounding of him that day; she'd
banged him on the head a couple of times with a hard bath toy in the
bathtub, and he has a cute little bruise to show for it. We figured it
was just a little poke in the eye, no big deal, and he'd get over it
soon enough.
Only he didn't. At 8PM, as I was fixing to put them to bed, his eye was
still clearly bothering him. So I pulled out a handy children's medical
reference book, and it informed me that in the case of an eye injury, if
it still hurts after half an hour, seek medical attention.
I called the pediatrician, and he told me to take Tommy to the ER.
I went upstairs where Dan was lying down. Dan has been sick for over a
week now. I told him I had to take Tommy to the ER, and should I get
Catherine to bed first, or could he handle that? He said he'd put
Catherine to bed. I rounded up everything I might need, got Tommy into
a vehicle, and we headed to the ER.
We got there around 9, got triaged a few minutes later, and were called
back to a curtain area around 10. Just after we'd gotten to the curtain
area, something emerged, and the docs got delayed on their various
assignments.
Then it turned out we weren't the only ones to come in with an eye
injury that evening, and the other guy was in the curtain next to us.
There were two different setups for examining eyes, and the one not
appropriate for an infant was put in our curtain, then the one that was
appropriate was taken to the next curtain and used for the other eye
injury. So we had to wait some more. I could hear the conversations
about the other guy's injury; it seemed he was an instructor who'd
taught a welding class that afternoon, and at the end of the class, as
they were cleaning up, he used his hand to wipe some sweat off his
face. Somehow something on his hand ended up in his eye, and it really
wasn't good. The ER doc wouldn't try to take it out, for fear of making
the injury worse in the process, and just gave him something for the
pain and the number of the opthalmologists' office right by the hospital
so he could make an appointment in the morning.
Then the equipment was free for use on Tommy.
We got a different doc; I think he's seen one of my kids on a previous
ER visit. I held Tommy down while he put some numbing drops in the eye,
then some fluorescent dye, and after that he used the blacklight to look
at the eye. It was scratched, but not around the cornea, so we were
just going to need to treat it with antibiotic and have a follow-up with
Tommy's pediatrician.
After this, I noticed that the curtain between our bed and the other eye
guy's bed was open a bit, and I poked my head in and chatted with the
guy and his roommate. It didn't rank up there with the
Volkswagen-dealers-on-the-Southwest-flight experience, but it was fairly
pleasant considering that one guy was injured and I was holding a baby
who should have gone to bed three hours before then. The woman who came
to get his insurance information was joking with them some, as well.
The roommate was a riot, or as close to one as we were going to get
there.
They got all the discharge paperwork and left. I had to wait a little
while longer for the nurse to come carry out the doc's instructions.
She got the antibiotic ointment in Tommy's eye, and let me administer
the oral syringe of Motrin. She was impressed at how well Tommy took
both. (In general, Tommy was taking things better than the ER staff
expected of someone his age, which was nice for them and nice for me to
hear.) We got his discharge papers and the prescription to fill this
morning, I stuffed them into the diaper bag, and we headed for the car.
We got home around 12:40. I nursed Tommy and then put him to bed.
So, that's the details. :)
Thanks to the folks who answered my question about the speeches
on-line. I'll check those out sometime after I've had a nap. (I'm
eating lunch as I type and hoping I'm not getting mustard on the
keyboard.)
Julia
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
