TheMommyBlog

Three hours, eight vials of blood, one urine sample, and two x-rays later, I was congratulated on a raging kidney infection. I mean, really, who gets those? And why me? And why so close to another holiday weekend??

And what is with the social dynamic in emergency rooms? Either everyone keeps to themselves and suffers in silence, or the latch onto one another with a desperate sort of alacrity. Folks, the one place you can stare at the wall and exercise your God-given right to be grumpy and anti-social is the emergency room. Embrace it.

I was on a gurney in a corner with two other patients. Across the room was a charming little 17 month old boy with a case of nursery elbow. Cute to beat the band, with a laugh exactly like Logan had at that age, and the same drooling problem. I was smitten. The parents were an adorable couple, obviously devoted to their child and trying to make him comfortable. They were expecting another child, and we went through the usual patter of hoping for a girl this time or they will be making the ER their second home, as I have.

On the other side of the curtain from me was a redheaded guy with a deep, bold voice who had torn calf muscle while doing stretches at the club. It always amuses me to hear how people relate their injury stories. “I was doing my usual warm-up stretches, you know, before working out, and I did one rep, then another, and then pop! So I went for a rubdown (because that is available to me, you know) and tried to see my orthopedist, who takes care of all the professional athletes in the Bay Area. I knew I probably wouldn’t get an appointment right away because he’s usually on the sidelines of the 49ers games… well not now, obviously, it’s not football season, but you can always see him there during the games. Anyway… blahdeblah speakityspeak..” I rolled my eyes and winced at the pain.

Once the doctor skittered off to find a pair of crutches for the guy and send him home, he got up and came around the curtain to talk to everyone as if we were all holding martini glasses and picking through the nut bowls for the cashews. I’ve spent so much time in hospitals and ER rooms that I have become inured to the lack of privacy and impersonal atmosphere, so for me, this was an amusing change, but good gravy.

And since I knew he was going through a divorce (a critical piece of information relayed during intake), it felt strangely like a pickup. I sat up and crossed my legs. Why? Why did I care? Normally, I don’t. When I was being fitted for both a cather and an epidural in the O.R. prior to Daphne’s birth via c-section, I broke into song: “I feel pretty, oh so pretty...”

Anyway, during the couple of hours we all waited to be diagnosed and discharged, we chitchatted and worked as a team to keep the little boy giggling and distracted from his dislocated elbow. As I was led away to Radiology, I waved and promised to be back soon to play more peekaboo when his lip trembled at my leaving. Here I was, half-believing I was going to be admitted to wait out an obviously impending coma judging from the overwhelming pain and fever—I mean, I was in agony—but wave a child in distress at me and all of a sudden I’m Mary Freaking Poppins and Barney rolled into one.

Anyway, I’m home now and will try to spend the next few days in bed while the antibiotics do their work. I have a fresh bottle of Vicodin (wheeeee!) and several movies I’m dying to see. Also, as you may have noted, internet access. It’s still too painful to talk about, but the only reason I am able to post this now is that the entire system has been wiped and reloaded. My poor, poor little poopsie.

And there I was, standing there in my bare feet and pjs, suddenly thinking about Bruce Willis in Die Hard. I did not get that visual later, or as I began to type this up; no, it came to me while I was still stunned, shocked, looking around me at the sea of half-inch wide pieces of shattered safety glass and noting the dozen or so cuts on my feet and forearms just beginning to trickle and drip.

Holy keeerist in a sidecar. My kids were just in there. Breathe, Breathe.

I carefully plotted an escape route, holding my bleeding forearms up like a surgeon, and grabbed my cell phone. “Gil? Hi! Um, where are you?” “Safeway, why?” “Um, the shower door finally came down, and, um, shatttered, and I’m bleeding, and could you come home?”

He abandoned the cart of groceries and drove the two blocks home, burst into the house, found me in the bathroom, sweeping up glass and sobbing and held his arms out to me. I don’t remember the last time I cried like that. When Dylan was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit on a respirator for ten days? I was a rock. When they had to use the little paddles to cardiovert him on day four or so? The doctor almost cried watching me be strong.

In fact, the last time I remember crying like that on Gil’s shoulder was in 1992, before we were married. I’d gotten up in the middle of the night to pee, and he hid in the closet and jumped out at me as I made my way back to bed. He scared the bejeezus out of me, and I sobbed and sobbed. Funny, that.

Anyway, we went into the kitchen and rinsed out my cuts to see if any needed stitches, and none did, so I put on a few bandaids and went back to sweeping up. It was unbelievable. I filled one of those big kitchen cans almost halfway with tiny circlets of glass. Getting them out of the tub full of water and bubbles was a task and a half. It was like panning for diamonds. Tiny, worthless diamonds that would shred your fingers if you weren’t careful.

Anyway, I am so so so so so glad my kids weren’t there when it happened, or I am sure we’d be at the ER right now. And they’d never let me run another bubble bath for them again.

P.S. Gil just popped his head in to comment on the droplets of blood I left on the walls. Says it lends a homey touch.

P.S. Another holiday around the corner!

Father’s Day, 1999: I sliced my finger to the bone cutting bagels, fainted, and gave myself a shiner on the dishwasher on the way down. The good news? The doctors in the Gary, Indiana ER are really good with defense wounds!

Labor Day, 1999: We thought we’d done ok, until we realized that my stepdad had cracked a tooth at our picnic and needed an emergency crown.

Memorial Day, 2001: This was a triple-whammy. Gil was working on the sprinkler system when he stabbed himself in the thigh with an exacto knife. I took him to the ER and left him there while I took the children back home. Not 30 minutes later, his father was calling to let us know that a family friend has been electrocuted on his front lawn when he touched a pipe to a live wire. I had to tell them that Gil would have to call them back, as he was being sewn up at the hospital.

I went back to the ER several hours later to pick him up and as I was waiting with the children, my mother walked in with a with a spouting stab wound in her hand. She and my stepdad had been working in the yard (sprinklers again) when she decided to clean out her outdoor votive candles with a serrated steak knife. The knife shattered the glass, went right through her hand and took an artery with it. As Gil was discharged, I tossed him the car keys and the stroller, and went to fill out mom’s paperwork and wait with her to be seen by a plastic surgeon.

Later that night, my stepdad dropped me off at home. As I walked through the door, Gil said to me without even looking up, “Have a look in the garage.” The cabinet holding all of our laundry gear, pesticides, paint cans, and odds & ends had fallen off the wall, killed the dryer, dented the washer, flipped over, and impaled itself on the Jeep’s rearview mirrow.

Labor Day, 2001: Overnight camping trip/mini-music festival with large group of friends. One three year old, one 12-month old, and a bun in the oven. No WAY was I sleeping in a tent. So we rented a cabin with a king size bed, only to discover on arrival that said bed was ten feet off the floor, up a ladder, in a loft consisting of an edgeless platform. Jesus wept.

In the end no one fell off the platform, but Dylan slipped off the bottom rung of the ladder, fell twelve inches, and fractured his wrist. You simply have not lived until you have in appeared in public with a baby in a cast.

Thanksgiving, 2002: Dylan pops the most impressive-looking hernia in family history, and we are prone to them. This one was a rare, Spigelian hernia, off to the side of the belly button and therefore not a an umbilical hernia. The hospital is called, but we are told we can wait a day to bring him in, unless of course he displayed further sysptoms like vomiting, fainting, or uncontrollable screaming.

New Year’s Eve, 2002: Dylan has triple-hernia repair. Or more accurately, attempted triple-hernia repair. They fixed the two inguinals, but the more rare and worrisome Spigelian hernia could not be located once they’d opened him up. We get a glimpse of it now and then, however, when he has especially vibrant tantrums.

Christmas week, 2003: Logan and Dylan each celebrated the holiday with trips to the ER for head wounds. Dylan pulled his stocking holder down on his head, and exactly one week later (Same admitting nurse both nights), Logan fell off his dresser and split open the back of his scalp.

Memorial Day, 2004: The neighbor stopped by a short while ago to say that she had heard a BANG BANG BANG ~ OUCH!, and was a bit worried. Gil had been installing a downspout and sliced his finger open, and he’s still at the emergency room…