This past Saturday, Nathan had been picked up by my friend Kelly and her son (and Nathan’s best friend) Forrest and had just jumped out of the car in Kelly’s driveway when he slammed shut the car door he was holding and shut his thumb INTO THE DOOR.His right thumb. He is right handed. Of course.
I was taking a nap but woke up when I heard the commotion and found poor Nathan sitting on the couch crying with a thumb that was definitely swelling and discolored. After a dose of ibuprofen, he felt well enough to go back to Forrest’s house to spend the night as planned.
By dinner last night though, he was having a hard time moving it at all, and the swelling was not going down. So this morning as soon as our pediatrician’s office opened I called about getting him in for an appointment. They had no open appointments. Well then.
So instead, after a frustating fifteen minutes on the phone with Blue Cross Blue Shield Customer Service (the BCBS website was not finding any urgent care facilities in the entire COUNTY that would accept our Community Blue PPO blahdeblah insurance, which is because the billing is for the DOCTOR in charge at the urgent care, not the facility itself, which you would think they would know, but I digress), I decided to take him to Lansing Urgent Care which is actually in East Lansing but again, digressing.
We walk into Lansing Urgent Care and there are 3 other people in the waiting room. I sign us in. There is a huge fish tank mounted in one wall, and a guy is there with buckets and hoses and containers of things, cleaning the tank. He has his head shaved into a Mohawk, except the Mohawk part has no product in it, so instead of Liberty Spikes, he basically has a shaved head with a limp tail of hair hanging down his back. Maybe he only does the spikes when he isn’t cleaning fish tanks.
We watch as he picks up a sea anemone and moves it from one part of the tank to another. Remember Finding Nemo? How sea anemones have poison in those wavy tentacles that’s released when they are touched? I ask the guy, how can you touch them without it hurting you? He says…
“Well, it does hurt me, but I’m not exactly going to cry in front of everybody”
Alrighty then, Mr. Macho. You go on with your bad poison-tentacle-touching self.
When he leaves we amuse ourselves watching the clown fish, the crabs crawling through the white sand, a shrimp we spot on the side of a big piece of coral. We find a big spiky anemone, black with long black spikes and what looks like an eye in the middle. I imagine fish are neither happy nor unhappy, they just are. They live the life they are given.
After an hour in the waiting room we are called back. Another 15 minutes, in comes a doctor, who says Nathan will get an x-ray. The exam room has a small TV on the wall with basic cable, which turns out to be a lifesaver. We watch “Dora” while we wait for the X-ray tech. We watch “Diego”. We are about 10 minutes into “Max and Ruby” before the doctor comes back in and apologizes for our wait, there is someone getting a “complicated” X-ray and it will be “a few more minutes”.
“Max and Ruby” ends and “Ni Hao Kai Lan” starts. Kaitlyn is hungry. She’s bored with coloring and playing with the little doll and stuffed dog she brought. I have no snacks in the bag because I never thought it would take THREE HOURS. Finally the X-ray tech comes for Nathan, he’s back in less than 5 minutes. “Ni Hao Kai Lan” ends while we wait for the x-rays to process.
The doctor comes in, says good news, it’s not broken. She’s ordering a splint for his thumb and ibuprofen every 4 hours, for 5-7 days. She leaves. “Yo Gabba Gabba” starts while we wait for someone to come back with the thumb splint and discharge papers. A nurse comes in carrying a clipboard. I say, “did you have a thumb splint?” She squints at the papers on the clipboard, then leaves. We go back to “Yo Gabba Gabba”. Kaitlyn is slowly dissolving into a weepy puddle.
Finally the nurse comes back with the thumb splint this time. I sign two papers, go to the front desk, hand over my HSA card, and we are DONE. I wave goodbye at the fish as we walk past the tank. I’ve been placating Kaitlyn for the previous hour with promises of an ice cream cone, never mind that we didn’t have any kind of lunch, she deserves ice cream after waiting 3 hours. Baskin Robbins is two blocks away. We get ice cream in cups with hot fudge and eat every drop.
Back home, after stopping at Rite Aid for children’s motrin and at McDonald’s for chicken nuggets because Kaitlyn was still hungry after her ice cream and I was too frazzled to argue, I get Kaitlyn AND Nathan down for naps. It is 3:00 when I sit down on the couch. We left the house at 10:45 am. I say hi to Ryan and fall sound asleep on the couch for two hours.
I wake to the ringing phone, it’s my Dad. My Grandma has a blood clot in her leg and has to have a procedure to remove it. A second cousin I don’t know at all has died of cancer. I thank my Dad for calling and hang up, the phone rings again. It’s my husband.
Who, I forgot to tell you, is in Louisville Kentucky on business. We discuss Nathan, how he should still go to school even if he can’t write, and how I am going to have to reschedule Wednesday night’s parent teacher conference because Ryan has an Orchestra concert that same night, and whether I am going to take Nathan and Kaitlyn to the concert or not (my vote is NO).
Both Chris and I have dead batteries in our cameras. I bought a new battery but now it won’t recharge. We suspect the battery charger itself is broken. I borrowed my Dad’s little Powershot. It has a bent pin and won’t accept a memory card. I haven’t taken a photo of the kids since March 3rd and can’t photograph any of the products I’m reviewing for my review blog or any of the meals I’m cooking for my food blog.
It’s dinner time. I was going to grocery shop today. We have some cheese slices and some canned soup. Chris left folded laundry on the floor last night that is still there, tomorrow morning is trash pickup which means scooping the kitty litter, emptying the diaper genie and the wastebaskets. I’ve got to figure out what to do about the backlog of product reviews I need to do and pick the winners in the t-shirt giveaway. I look around and realize I’m the grownup and everyone in this room is relying on ME.
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swim, swim.
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What a day! All I can say to that is, thank goodness I live in Canada and have universal medical! Not to say we don’t have to wait around a lot for service, but 3 hours?!!! Whoa! I feel for ya girl!