Yesterday was my day to go to the gym after work. As I grunted away on the elliptical machine, I looked up and saw a fly trapped in the fluorescent light above my head. It was an office-style light, so the fly was walking around on a frosted plastic panel about three inches from the bulbs. I spent probably ten minutes wondering how hot it was for the fly, if he was comfortable or if he was praying that we would shut the light off before he fried. It sort of bothered me. It was a nice distraction from the fire building in my lungs, though.
Right before I left, I did the weighted ab machine. I was moving the pin around when the machine shifted and 100 pounds of resistance came thumping down on my head. I stood up, dazed, thinking it probably should've knocked me out or given me a concussion, but it just glanced off. Then I wondered how many pounds of pressure it is when someone punches you in the head, and I decided skulls must be tougher than I think they are. Then I pictured rocks falling on my head, my head busting open like a melon. I thought about calling Beloved to tell him I'd been clocked, but then I realized I was fine, I wasn't dizzy -- nothing, in fact, was wrong. I drove home.
I walked into the house about 7:15, a little later than usual. I could hear my husband upstairs talking on the phone in an anxious voice. I could hear the little angel moaning. I went upstairs and saw blood in her underwear. There'd been an incident, she said, with the monkey bars, and now she didn't want to pee because it hurt too bad. She's had monkey bar incidents before, but never ones preventing her from wanting to pee. That was the part that bothered me. Images of catheters danced in my head. Beloved ran down to see when the urgent care closed -- 8 p.m. We piled in the car, leaving my turkey burger sitting on the counter.
There was nobody at the urgent care center, which was a beautiful new facility. They were very nice, but then when we got back there, the very serious doctor took an X-ray and talked about pain management and prescribed some stuff and said it was okay. I sent Beloved and the little angel out to the car and went back to settle up when the very serious doctor came back out and caught me, soap-opera style. "I want you to look at this X-ray," he said.
Well, I'm no X-ray reader, but when he pointed to a very small imperfection on the right side of her pelvic bone, I could see it. He said it could be a fracture, that it was a small chance, but a chance, and had he been in the ER he would've done a CAT scan. Then he said "blah, blah, blah ORTHOPEDIC SPECIALIST, blah, blah, EMERGENCY ROOM, blah, blah" and my heart exploded into 36 million pieces and I began to rue the day monkey bars were ever invented. He burned the X-ray to CD and sent us over to the emergency room.
I've been to the suburban ER before, and there was nobody there. This time, the waiting room was packed, but we were still seen in about an hour. There was a family of five cradling a screaming toddler with a mouth full of blood, a young woman with her shirt half off and an arm and shoulder iced, a tall, gangly tween boy holding his arm in a way that was just wrong, wrong, wrong. There was a couple with a tiny little baby. The little angel had to pee so bad, but when I took her to the bathroom, she screamed like snakes were eating her toes and only emptied her bladder about halfway, soaking her underwear in the process. Beloved told me later he'd stood outside the door, listening, feeling just as helpless as I did.
I tried to throw out her underwear but she howled. "But MOMMY, those are my FAVORITE underwear."
I said, "Baby, they're all wet, and I have nowhere to put them."
"NO YOU CAN'T THROW THEM AWAY."
So out I went, to the receptionist, holding the soaking underwear, and asked for a plastic bag. "We have vomit bags," the bored-looking woman said and handed me a bizarre blue paper thing with a ring around the opening. It had measurements on the bottom. You need to measure vomit? I mean, if someone is puking enough to worry about fluid loss, wouldn't you know it was just A LOT?
The little angel walked out of the bathroom, her lacerated bits underwear-less and in jeans. She yawned. I sent Beloved home for a Pull-Up and pajamas and books, since it looked like we would be there for a while. I looked at the other families. I thought about CAT scans and pelvic breaks and orthopedic specialists. She looked fine to me, other than the unfortunately located owies, but I knew they would heal pretty quickly if we could just get her to relax and pee. I worried she'd hold it and give herself a kidney infection, forget how to be potty trained. I let myself catastrophize until Beloved came back, while reading the little angel Peter Pan off the Internet on my phone.
He returned with my turkey burger and her clothes. He read her books while I chewed. Finally they called us back, and the doctor who'd read the X-rays said even if the irregularity was a fracture, which it could be, they wouldn't do anything, because it was stable. I sighed. There would be no traction, no full-body cast, which I'd suspected since she climbed onto the exam table by herself, but still. Then he looked at what the urgent-care doc had prescribed and did a double-take. "This is baby Vicadin," he said.
I gulped. "Doesn't that seem a little extreme?"
He nodded. "I wouldn't give her a narcotic unless she couldn't walk. This could cause side effects like vomiting and constipation."
GREAT. Note to self: always ask what the hell the medication is if I don't recognize it.
The doc left to consult with pediatrics, who basically said the same thing. So then a nurse came in and pumped her full of Motrin and said she was a very brave girl. Everyone agreed a warm baking soda bath would probably help her to pee. We left. The entire adventure had taken 2.5 hours, including drive time. I was amazed. If we still lived in the city, the same thing would've taken probably 7 at minimum.
The little angel was tired, and Beloved put her to bed. I was still wound up, so I watched Grey's Anatomy, and (spoiler) a little boy almost died. As the mother held him in the hospital, I started heaving with sobs. Beloved looked at me -- I knew he was wondering why I watched that stuff.
But I was thinking of what Eden wrote the other day:
I needed a good cry but there's usually too much going on for me to
commit the time it takes to get good and worked up for one. But lately
I've felt like I've had a sort of emotional cold and I needed to sit in
front of an emotional humidifier with eucalyptus and a towel over my
head to draw it out of me.
So I told Beloved that, when it was over. I was scared. I needed to cry. I couldn't just cry. So I watched this show, knowing it was about hospitals, knowing it was sad, and I got out the cry. I felt better.
Before I went to bed, I crawled in with the little angel for a minute, watching her sleep, thinking how very precious she is to me, how helpless I am to protect her from everything in the world. It was an accident. I can't bar her from the playground. I watched her breathe and thanked God again for sparing her head, her pelvic bone, her arms, her legs. I thought how fragile and how strong our bodies are. And then I went to bed.
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In happier news, I have an article about carbon footprint calculators up at SuperEco today.
