Yesterday
I don't know if it was a bad day or a really good day, but I will say it was eventful.
Wednesdays I have to be at work at 8. Wed and Fri. All other days my butt is not required to be on campus before 11am, so usually, after I get the boy ready for school I have time to clean or nap.
It's actually nice that I had to work at 8am because that gave me some time to study before my 11am exam. Yes, exam. The first exam in my BioPChem class.
What is it about engineering exams that you always walk out going, WTH?! You study what they've presented you, but none of that is actually on the exam. What is on the exam is a bunch of stuff you've never seen or done before, but that you have to use what they've presented to you to figure out.
Very few people are expected to do extremely well. This is just the way it's done. Exams end up as their own teaching tool. And afterwards much beer is desired.
So I did that yesterday. UUGHHH!! Crazy stuff. I feel like I did ok on most of the exam. We'll see.
Afterwards I had some time before work, so I went to print out some background check forms that I have to fill out in order to volunteer as an assistant coach for Jonas's soccer team. I don't know if I feel like I'm finally in decent enough shape to do it, but I bet that's part of it.
I was just about to get settled when I get a phone call from the school nurse. I figured Wonas had thrown up again. He does that every so often. I think maybe that's a result of us feeding him vegany food at home most of the time, and then he goes to school and maybe eats something regular there and it doesn't agree with him. Maybe we've made him soft like that.
That's one theory. Kids his age play sneeze tag, so there's no telling what kind of germs he's getting. But no, that wasn't what she was calling about. Apparently, and this was hard to get on the phone with background noise and her thick accent, Jonas had sustained a head injury at school, either in PE or at recess, and she had stopped the bleeding, but she thought it might need stitches.
Her recommendation was to come get him and take him to go do that. He was not crying in the background, so that was good. Ok then! Off I go after I grab my stuff off the printer, call Daddy, and then my boss.
When I get there he's got a gauze pad taped to his head, which is problematic because I've neglected to cut his hair recently and damnit. So I get a small glimpse of a small bloody wound, and put him in the car to go see the pediatrician. On the way I ask him what happened. He said he was running and looking backwards and ran into the 8 ft chain-link fence that separates the playground from the parking lot.
His pediatrician's office closes from 1-2:30 every day for lunch. Or is that 12-2:30? Whatever. They were just opening up when we got there. We went in and were promptly sent away as they do not do stitches. Fine, off to the ER!
I took him to an ER that is close to Andy's work, over on 59 and Kirby. It's a Methodist ER and it's nice and quiet and never busy. They were very nice to the boy. We were sent to an exam room and the boy was very curious about the whole thing.
"Is this where I'm going to sleep for a few days?" He's familiar with hospital beds, but not admission procedures. They weighed him, 77.2 lbs, took his blood pressure, ripped off the bandage, OWWW, and then in came the doctor.
At this point, he has been asked by two nurses and the guy at the front desk what happened, and he told them what he told me, ran into a fence, blah blah blah. When the doctor comes in, the story gets more interesting.
"Me and three friends of mine where playing a game that we made up. The game was called 'Monsters'. One of us was the monster and the other three were three kids. The monster had already killed our parents and was chasing us." This is where my face went all mortified and I tried to interject about him simply running into a fence, but the doctor held his hand up like, "no, I wanna hear this... " The nurse was cracking up laughing, the doctor was stifling a giggle, and I was sitting in the back with my hand over my face.
"So I was running and I was looking behind me and I hit the fence." Orphaned and now wounded. Oh my.
After this the doctor went through he normal questions with him again that we'd already answered, no medical conditions, what medicine does he take, any allergies to medication... The doctor asked Jonas, "so you're a pretty healthy kid?" To which Jonas replied, "well, the other day I went to McDonald's..."
And now I decided to finally interject, "Baby, ONE trip to McDonald's does not make you COMPLETELY unhealthy." The doctor laughed, "I LIKE him. He's FUNNY." My son is always amusing to medical personnel.
The doctor examined the wound and decided that after cleaning, he would put surgical staples to close it. One, probably two would suffice. He laid our options out on the table. We could get a shot to numb the area, then do staples, or take the chance that it might only take one staple and just do the staple. He left us to discuss and decide.
I recommended the shot on the possibility that it would take two staples, and Jonas understood that one owwie was less then two owwies, so he begrudgingly agreed. The wound was washed by the nurse, which perhaps resulted in more peroxide water in Jonas's ear than in the laceration, at least this was my perception from the boy's reaction.
The shot and subsequent stapling led to much crying, but no struggling or otherwise unpleasant behavior. All in all he did quite well. After he calmed down we got some ointment, a fresh gauze pad, and a neato head band to keep it in place.
We went home after a quick trip to go see Daddy at work, and then it was dinner, video games, hula hooping, and beer. Some of all was enjoyed by each of the two of us. I sent him back to school today with no recess. The staples come out in 7-10 days.
One additional annoyance is the knowledge that his school does not have any school insurance for covering things like this, something that is otherwise common in public school. Another reason we'd like to get him into the math and science magnet program at Red.
But that's another post for another time. Yesterday is over. It wasn't a horrible day, it wasn't a great day. It was a unsettling mix of the two. Today I would like to have the dullest day ever, and it looks like I'm well on my way.
:)