So. This post was going to be all about the kids going back to school. I was going to post about all of my hopes (Kid #1 doing his homework the first time I ask) and dreams (Kid #2 letting me drop him off at the door instead of making me walk him into the preschool building in my pajamas) for the 2014/2015 school year.
I was also going to write about my own personal goals for the coming school year, like not wearing pajamas to school functions. School functions that start after four pm, anyway.
Then last week happened.
It was the last day before Kid #2 was supposed to start preschool and freedom was so close I could practically taste it. It tasted like a Play Doh and Elmer's Glue flavored martini, in case you were wondering.
Kid #1 was already a week into first grade and loving it (well, loving recess, anyway) and Kid #2 would be attending preschool five mornings a week. Kid #3 isn't in school yet but he still naps in the morning.
That means that five mornings a week I will have up to an hour and a half of ALONE TIME every single day. You do the math. No, seriously, will someone please do the math for me? I'd like to know about how many hours of free time I will have.
I'm not sure what I will do with this freedom. I might actually keep up with the laundry (haha!). I might take on more freelance work. I might just take a shower and enjoy not having to peek out every five seconds to make sure my one-year-old isn't drinking out of the toilet.
Anyway. I was standing there in the backyard, pushing my kids on the swings and trying not to look at Facebook on my phone. See, I was attempting to live in the present but at this particular moment I really needed to see what other moms were doing to live in the present because, to be honest, I was getting bored. I needed to find that one Facebook friend that was savoring every second of her last day at home with the kiddos (#blessed) and figure out what I was doing wrong.
Then the phone rang. It was Kid #1's school. It was lunchtime so I figured it was the "Your child bumped his head on the playground" call that I get every 3-5 days from the school nurse. Because the old "what happens on the playground stays on the playground" rule is no longer a thing. Now you get a phone call any time there is a bump that could cause a potential drop in IQ points.
If you ask me, these phone calls are unnecessarily alarming. I blame lawyers and standardized testing.
"Mrs. Zelwin?" I looked around for my mother-in-law. Oh, wait, she meant me. "It's the school nurse. Your son fell on the playground and is going to need x-rays on his arm."
"Really?" I asked. I wondered how she could be so sure. Last spring Kid #1 sprained his wrist and howled like he'd been impaled by his brother's plastic ninja sword. Once he jumped off of the roof of his playhouse and I was sure his foot was broken only to find, three hours in the ER later, it was just a little bruised.
The point being that you never really know with kids how bad the injury is and I had two barefoot children pouring sand on each others' heads and I wondered if maybe an ice pack would suffice until 2:30.
Also, we're on a high deductible plan.
"I don't want to say any more...there are other kids in the room" the nurse said.
"I don't want to say any more...there are other kids in the room" the nurse said.
OK, now I was starting to get a little concerned, but I did appreciate her discretion. It's nice to know that any future medical emergencies that my kids are exposed to at school will be handled without the expression "Get your ass in here this is really fucking bad."
I threw my kids in the car along with their shoes and the contents of my pantry. I've been to the ER, I knew better than to risk dehydration or a hunger-induced tantrum during the three hour wait to see an exhausted and overworked resident who would prescribe ice and Motrin and send us on our way.
When we got to the school we were met at the front door by the principal. It must be a slow day, I thought.
"I've seen your son and he assured me that he was not pushed, tripped, or in any way bullied into hurting his arm. It was a freak accident on the monkey bars. No one was to blame."
I wondered why the principal felt the need to absolve the rest of the first graders who were on the playground with my son of any kind of guilt or responsibility for this injury. I guess it was another lawyer thing. Or maybe it was because of parents like the ones I've heard about at preschool who get totally livid because a two year old bit their two year old for taking his crayons. Not because he's a crayon-hoarding vampire but because he's A TWO YEAR OLD.
Everyone's a victim.
Either way, it didn't even cross my mind that my son's injury could be a result of bullying. Partly because he plays with a group of girls at recess. They call themselves "The Crew" and last week their game was called "Imaginary Horse Club." It's unclear to me at this point whether he's their pimp or their bitch but they seem like nice enough girls and I doubt that other than a little hair-pulling any of them are capable of doing real physical harm.
I threw my kids in the car along with their shoes and the contents of my pantry. I've been to the ER, I knew better than to risk dehydration or a hunger-induced tantrum during the three hour wait to see an exhausted and overworked resident who would prescribe ice and Motrin and send us on our way.
When we got to the school we were met at the front door by the principal. It must be a slow day, I thought.
"I've seen your son and he assured me that he was not pushed, tripped, or in any way bullied into hurting his arm. It was a freak accident on the monkey bars. No one was to blame."
I wondered why the principal felt the need to absolve the rest of the first graders who were on the playground with my son of any kind of guilt or responsibility for this injury. I guess it was another lawyer thing. Or maybe it was because of parents like the ones I've heard about at preschool who get totally livid because a two year old bit their two year old for taking his crayons. Not because he's a crayon-hoarding vampire but because he's A TWO YEAR OLD.
Everyone's a victim.
Either way, it didn't even cross my mind that my son's injury could be a result of bullying. Partly because he plays with a group of girls at recess. They call themselves "The Crew" and last week their game was called "Imaginary Horse Club." It's unclear to me at this point whether he's their pimp or their bitch but they seem like nice enough girls and I doubt that other than a little hair-pulling any of them are capable of doing real physical harm.
Also, my son is a major daredevil. He walked at ten months and climbed at ten months-and-one-day. He has no sense of fear or basic safety or even common sense for that matter. That he would hurt himself on the playground kind of goes without saying.
"You're going to want to get that arm x-rayed," the principal was saying.
"Oh, right. We're on our way to the ER now. I have a friend meeting me to take the little one. This isn't my first --"
"--rodeo," He finished. I looked down at the barefoot toddler on my hip and the four year old with his sand-encrusted face pressed up against the glass door.
I guess it was obvious we were dealing with cattle here, and not little boys.
I walked into the school and could hear Kid #1's howls before I even got to the nurses office. It might sound insensitive but I was still not alarmed. My oldest child sounds pretty much the same whether he has a splinter or a sprained ankle. I walked in to find him, red-faced and sweaty from the playground, with his arm wrapped in a makeshift splint constructed from file folders, rubber bands, and ziploc baggies full of ice.
Those school nurses are crafty. And could maybe use some decent medical supplies.
I thanked the staff and hustled us out of there and into the car. Kid #1 proceeded to scream all the way to the emergency room. I think I handled this pretty calmly.
Then again it was hard to freak out because Kid #1 was insisting every time I made a turn with the car I was KILLING him and I was busy explaining that there was no possible way to make it from point A (school) to point B (the ER) without making a single turn of the car. It seemed logical enough to me but Kid #1 was not buying it.
After about ten minutes of this Kid #2 piped up from the backseat "My brother's going to be OK...right Mom?"
Clearly he realized that there were two right hand turns coming up and he wanted to make sure his brother was not, in fact, going to be killed by them.
When we got to the ER I pulled up to the curb and met the friend/lifesaver I had called en route who had come to pick up Kid #3 and take him home for lunch and a nap. She is a mom whose two kids are already in school all day and was in the middle of enjoying her first week of freedom. I assume that means she was playing mah-jong or shopping at Target ALONE or maybe taking a nap (OH MY GOD WHAT WAS SHE DOING? I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T EVEN ASK) Whatever it was she was doing, she knew when I called instead of texting her that it was important because she answered the phone with "Are you OK?" and came straight to the ER and that is why she was both my friend and my lifesaver that day.
See, this is why it's good that always I text instead of call (some people- like my husband- give me a hard time about this). If I called her all the time to chat instead of texting she would have been like "Oh geez she's calling to complain about the way the other moms at preschool park their SUV's again" and she wouldn't have picked up. But because I always text that kind of stuff she knew when she saw my number that this was life-or-death.
Or at least "life or life-in-the-ER-with-three-kids".
Which I'm pretty sure is like a really slow death anyway.
When we got into the ER, Kid #1's theatrics caused us to be taken directly into triage. I'm not sure what it was about a six year old screaming "OH MY GOD, I'M DYING! YOUR DRIVING WAS KILLING ME!" that made the nurses react as if this was a real emergency but they made sure to get him away from any other children who might be traumatized by his screams.
As for me, I'm used to people screaming at me about my driving so I was taking the verbal abuse more or less in stride.
Once they got us situated in the triage area the nurses disassembled the file folder splint and that's when I saw his arm for the first time. Suddenly it all made sense. The insistence that we go directly to the ER. The principal meeting us at the front door. The hysterical car ride.
The thing is, I'm not one to pass out at the sight of blood. Since having kids my tolerance for bodily fluids that are not my own has greatly increased. Still, when I saw my son's wrist bent at such a gross and unnatural angle, I almost threw up right there on the linoleum.
His forearm was no longer a straight line leading from point A (elbow) to point B (wrist).
There were bones intersecting where bones should not intersect.
It did not look good.
It looked fucking terrible.
After that, things sped up a bit. Consent forms were waved under my nose, ace bandages were unrolled, fresh ice packs were applied. I was told that my son and I were going to be transferred to The Big Hospital Downtown where an orthopedic resident would reset the bones while my son was sedated. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an IV line being inserted and heard the words "morphine drip." I briefly considered asking if I could get in on the morphine action.
Then I looked down at Kid #2, huddled in my lap with his eyes squeezed shut. Oh crap. I had to be strong for him, especially since he would be undergoing surgery in a few weeks to remove his tonsils and adenoids (because, let's face it, four cases of strep in one year is four too many).
Thankfully that's when my mom arrived to take Kid #2 home with her (somewhere in the chaos I had had the wherewithal to call my mother) and she looked at the paramedics loading Kid #1 onto the gurney and exclaimed "It's just like Grey's Anatomy in there!"
Now, I'm not sure if she's actually watched Grey's Anatomy lately or if her recent ER experiences have just been really lame, but I had been there about 45 minutes and had yet to see anyone even remotely McDreamy.
The ER nurse must have heard her too, because she informed me that the team at The Big Hospital Downtown would be prepared for us but that they wouldn't rush us in or make a big deal out of us or anything. The whole thing would be rather low-key.
"I get it," I said, "It's not like it's a gunshot wound." I was trying to be the 'calm, laid-back mom' but the nurse just stared at me. Apparently I'd crossed the line and become the 'idiotic mom'.
Once in the ambulance, Kid #1 gave the drivers strict instructions to avoid the freeway at all costs and not to make any turns whatsoever. Apparently this was going to be one slow straight ride. And to my dismay, the paramedics were not at all good looking, or even that personable. In fact the only time they cracked a smile was when I asked Kid #1 what he would want for a present for being so brave and he said "A ray gun so I can shoot people." They both chuckled at that one. Sure, they know he's going to bring them some sweet ambulance action in ten years when he shoots his brother's eye out.
We arrived at the ER and were told that because Kid #1 ate lunch right before hurting his arm, we would have to wait six hours for his stomach to empty out before he could be sedated for the procedure to re-set his bones.
I tried explaining that the turkey sandwich I'd sent for lunch was on a mini slider bun and it was highly unlikely that he'd eaten more then two spoonfuls of his yogurt, but it didn't matter. I get it, I wouldn't have wanted an unconscious kid puking on me either. Still, I asked Kid #1 if next time he could please break his arm before eating lunch.
He had just been given some Demerol to take the edge off and replied that I had four eyes.
Now, the next six hours could have been absolutely miserable for me, but aside from Kid #1 asking for something to drink (denied because, anesthesia) so often that I started to fear he was suffering short term memory loss, they really weren't that bad - and here's why:
1. I only had one child with me. Not two children who were fighting over toys, or who got the red cup, or my lap. Not three children who were climbing all over me, vying for attention I was unable to give them. Just one. One pleasantly drugged out child who was content to snuggle up in my lap and say funny things like "Wouldn't it be cool if we were teeny tiny and the sink was our swimming pool?"
The only thing better would have been if I could have been on what he was on.
2. The orthopedic resident, who was only minimally handsome, called himself The Bone Doctor. Call me immature, but it took all my willpower not to giggle and say "he said BONE" every time I heard that.
Seriously, I was not on what my son was on. This is just how my mind works.
3. My mom was at home with my other two kids. Normally this would have filled me with guilt, but when I called to see how she was doing she told me that her friends were over and they were having Happy Hour on my patio. This made me feel better because a) I always wanted to have a play date with alcohol but was afraid my mom would judge me and b) This totally makes us even for that time my parents went out of town and my sister and I threw a party at the house.
4. It made me appreciate the total lack of coordination and minimal upper body strength I had possessed as a child. I spent most of my elementary school years avoiding any kind of physical activity like the plague and to my recollection never even attempted to scale the monkey bars.
It turns out that by hiding out on the sidelines with a book in my lap I also missed out on a major rite of passage - falling off the monkey bars and breaking a bone. Every nurse, parent, or teacher I've come in contact with since Kid #1's accident has had a story about themselves or their children hurting themselves on the monkey bars.
Even the mother of one of Kid #2's preschool classmates who had grown up in the former Soviet Union had broken a bone this way. Although she did tell me that in her case it wasn't actually monkey bars, it was just one long metal bar that all the kids hung on together. Because, Communism.
5. When you're at the pediatric ER you see a lot of scary shit. OK, so you also see a lot of people who are there for the air conditioning and free Gatorade (thanks Obamacare!) but in addition to that you see babies being wheeled by with tubes going in and out of their teeny tiny bodies and oxygen masks covering most of their little faces. You see children sleeping all alone in their hospital rooms because their parents can't take off of work to be there with them or because they have to be home caring for their other children.
Your heart breaks for these children and for their parents and you thank G-d that you are only here for a relatively minor injury. It makes you live in the moment and squeeze your child with the broken arm tighter and it makes you want to go home and wake up your other two children and give them great big hugs. But you won't, because you never wake up a sleeping child. Ever.
6. There have been so many times lately when I thought "I totally suck at this." As in, motherhood. I feel overwhelmed, outnumbered, and under-appreciated. I am short-tempered and I am impatient. My kids cry and I yell at them and then I cry because I yelled at them and my kids yell at me not to cry.
If that last part confused you think about how my husband feels.
But then suddenly I was faced with a day when my head was saying "Oh my god his arm looks so disgusting I can't even look at it without wanting to vomit. This is really really bad."
And yet somehow my mouth was saying "You're going to be just fine, you are such a brave boy and it's all going to be OK."
And my heart was saying "Please G-d don't let anything worse than this ever happen to my baby, I love him so much it hurts."
In the end, Kid #1 came out of his Twilight Sedation (that's an anesthesia thing, not a Vampire thing) with his arm set and wrapped in a splint, declaring that he did not like feeling 'drunk' - something I will remind him of constantly for the next fifteen years or so. His take away from the whole experience was "I was really thirsty when we got to the hospital and it took them eight hours to get me a drink."
The next day I scheduled the appointment to get a hard cast put on and exhaled for what felt like the first time in twenty-four hours. Kid #1 was comfortably resting thanks to a nice combination of Motrin and Oxycodone that I definitely did not consider sampling. I was looking forward to having both kids (finally) attending school the next day and then I looked over and saw Kid #2 sleeping on the couch. It was 4 pm and Kid #2 hasn't napped in almost a year. I felt his forehead - it was on fire.
Did I say he'd had strep four times in the last year? Make that five. Here we go again...
Then again it was hard to freak out because Kid #1 was insisting every time I made a turn with the car I was KILLING him and I was busy explaining that there was no possible way to make it from point A (school) to point B (the ER) without making a single turn of the car. It seemed logical enough to me but Kid #1 was not buying it.
After about ten minutes of this Kid #2 piped up from the backseat "My brother's going to be OK...right Mom?"
Clearly he realized that there were two right hand turns coming up and he wanted to make sure his brother was not, in fact, going to be killed by them.
When we got to the ER I pulled up to the curb and met the friend/lifesaver I had called en route who had come to pick up Kid #3 and take him home for lunch and a nap. She is a mom whose two kids are already in school all day and was in the middle of enjoying her first week of freedom. I assume that means she was playing mah-jong or shopping at Target ALONE or maybe taking a nap (OH MY GOD WHAT WAS SHE DOING? I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T EVEN ASK) Whatever it was she was doing, she knew when I called instead of texting her that it was important because she answered the phone with "Are you OK?" and came straight to the ER and that is why she was both my friend and my lifesaver that day.
See, this is why it's good that always I text instead of call (some people- like my husband- give me a hard time about this). If I called her all the time to chat instead of texting she would have been like "Oh geez she's calling to complain about the way the other moms at preschool park their SUV's again" and she wouldn't have picked up. But because I always text that kind of stuff she knew when she saw my number that this was life-or-death.
Or at least "life or life-in-the-ER-with-three-kids".
Which I'm pretty sure is like a really slow death anyway.
When we got into the ER, Kid #1's theatrics caused us to be taken directly into triage. I'm not sure what it was about a six year old screaming "OH MY GOD, I'M DYING! YOUR DRIVING WAS KILLING ME!" that made the nurses react as if this was a real emergency but they made sure to get him away from any other children who might be traumatized by his screams.
As for me, I'm used to people screaming at me about my driving so I was taking the verbal abuse more or less in stride.
Once they got us situated in the triage area the nurses disassembled the file folder splint and that's when I saw his arm for the first time. Suddenly it all made sense. The insistence that we go directly to the ER. The principal meeting us at the front door. The hysterical car ride.
The thing is, I'm not one to pass out at the sight of blood. Since having kids my tolerance for bodily fluids that are not my own has greatly increased. Still, when I saw my son's wrist bent at such a gross and unnatural angle, I almost threw up right there on the linoleum.
His forearm was no longer a straight line leading from point A (elbow) to point B (wrist).
There were bones intersecting where bones should not intersect.
It did not look good.
It looked fucking terrible.
After that, things sped up a bit. Consent forms were waved under my nose, ace bandages were unrolled, fresh ice packs were applied. I was told that my son and I were going to be transferred to The Big Hospital Downtown where an orthopedic resident would reset the bones while my son was sedated. Out of the corner of my eye I saw an IV line being inserted and heard the words "morphine drip." I briefly considered asking if I could get in on the morphine action.
Then I looked down at Kid #2, huddled in my lap with his eyes squeezed shut. Oh crap. I had to be strong for him, especially since he would be undergoing surgery in a few weeks to remove his tonsils and adenoids (because, let's face it, four cases of strep in one year is four too many).
Thankfully that's when my mom arrived to take Kid #2 home with her (somewhere in the chaos I had had the wherewithal to call my mother) and she looked at the paramedics loading Kid #1 onto the gurney and exclaimed "It's just like Grey's Anatomy in there!"
Now, I'm not sure if she's actually watched Grey's Anatomy lately or if her recent ER experiences have just been really lame, but I had been there about 45 minutes and had yet to see anyone even remotely McDreamy.
The ER nurse must have heard her too, because she informed me that the team at The Big Hospital Downtown would be prepared for us but that they wouldn't rush us in or make a big deal out of us or anything. The whole thing would be rather low-key.
"I get it," I said, "It's not like it's a gunshot wound." I was trying to be the 'calm, laid-back mom' but the nurse just stared at me. Apparently I'd crossed the line and become the 'idiotic mom'.
Once in the ambulance, Kid #1 gave the drivers strict instructions to avoid the freeway at all costs and not to make any turns whatsoever. Apparently this was going to be one slow straight ride. And to my dismay, the paramedics were not at all good looking, or even that personable. In fact the only time they cracked a smile was when I asked Kid #1 what he would want for a present for being so brave and he said "A ray gun so I can shoot people." They both chuckled at that one. Sure, they know he's going to bring them some sweet ambulance action in ten years when he shoots his brother's eye out.
We arrived at the ER and were told that because Kid #1 ate lunch right before hurting his arm, we would have to wait six hours for his stomach to empty out before he could be sedated for the procedure to re-set his bones.
I tried explaining that the turkey sandwich I'd sent for lunch was on a mini slider bun and it was highly unlikely that he'd eaten more then two spoonfuls of his yogurt, but it didn't matter. I get it, I wouldn't have wanted an unconscious kid puking on me either. Still, I asked Kid #1 if next time he could please break his arm before eating lunch.
He had just been given some Demerol to take the edge off and replied that I had four eyes.
Now, the next six hours could have been absolutely miserable for me, but aside from Kid #1 asking for something to drink (denied because, anesthesia) so often that I started to fear he was suffering short term memory loss, they really weren't that bad - and here's why:
1. I only had one child with me. Not two children who were fighting over toys, or who got the red cup, or my lap. Not three children who were climbing all over me, vying for attention I was unable to give them. Just one. One pleasantly drugged out child who was content to snuggle up in my lap and say funny things like "Wouldn't it be cool if we were teeny tiny and the sink was our swimming pool?"
The only thing better would have been if I could have been on what he was on.
2. The orthopedic resident, who was only minimally handsome, called himself The Bone Doctor. Call me immature, but it took all my willpower not to giggle and say "he said BONE" every time I heard that.
Seriously, I was not on what my son was on. This is just how my mind works.
3. My mom was at home with my other two kids. Normally this would have filled me with guilt, but when I called to see how she was doing she told me that her friends were over and they were having Happy Hour on my patio. This made me feel better because a) I always wanted to have a play date with alcohol but was afraid my mom would judge me and b) This totally makes us even for that time my parents went out of town and my sister and I threw a party at the house.
4. It made me appreciate the total lack of coordination and minimal upper body strength I had possessed as a child. I spent most of my elementary school years avoiding any kind of physical activity like the plague and to my recollection never even attempted to scale the monkey bars.
It turns out that by hiding out on the sidelines with a book in my lap I also missed out on a major rite of passage - falling off the monkey bars and breaking a bone. Every nurse, parent, or teacher I've come in contact with since Kid #1's accident has had a story about themselves or their children hurting themselves on the monkey bars.
Even the mother of one of Kid #2's preschool classmates who had grown up in the former Soviet Union had broken a bone this way. Although she did tell me that in her case it wasn't actually monkey bars, it was just one long metal bar that all the kids hung on together. Because, Communism.
5. When you're at the pediatric ER you see a lot of scary shit. OK, so you also see a lot of people who are there for the air conditioning and free Gatorade (thanks Obamacare!) but in addition to that you see babies being wheeled by with tubes going in and out of their teeny tiny bodies and oxygen masks covering most of their little faces. You see children sleeping all alone in their hospital rooms because their parents can't take off of work to be there with them or because they have to be home caring for their other children.
Your heart breaks for these children and for their parents and you thank G-d that you are only here for a relatively minor injury. It makes you live in the moment and squeeze your child with the broken arm tighter and it makes you want to go home and wake up your other two children and give them great big hugs. But you won't, because you never wake up a sleeping child. Ever.
6. There have been so many times lately when I thought "I totally suck at this." As in, motherhood. I feel overwhelmed, outnumbered, and under-appreciated. I am short-tempered and I am impatient. My kids cry and I yell at them and then I cry because I yelled at them and my kids yell at me not to cry.
If that last part confused you think about how my husband feels.
But then suddenly I was faced with a day when my head was saying "Oh my god his arm looks so disgusting I can't even look at it without wanting to vomit. This is really really bad."
And yet somehow my mouth was saying "You're going to be just fine, you are such a brave boy and it's all going to be OK."
And my heart was saying "Please G-d don't let anything worse than this ever happen to my baby, I love him so much it hurts."
In the end, Kid #1 came out of his Twilight Sedation (that's an anesthesia thing, not a Vampire thing) with his arm set and wrapped in a splint, declaring that he did not like feeling 'drunk' - something I will remind him of constantly for the next fifteen years or so. His take away from the whole experience was "I was really thirsty when we got to the hospital and it took them eight hours to get me a drink."
The next day I scheduled the appointment to get a hard cast put on and exhaled for what felt like the first time in twenty-four hours. Kid #1 was comfortably resting thanks to a nice combination of Motrin and Oxycodone that I definitely did not consider sampling. I was looking forward to having both kids (finally) attending school the next day and then I looked over and saw Kid #2 sleeping on the couch. It was 4 pm and Kid #2 hasn't napped in almost a year. I felt his forehead - it was on fire.
Did I say he'd had strep four times in the last year? Make that five. Here we go again...
Comments
Post a Comment