A Night Spent in the ER

It's my first time, and that's saying a lot considering I've been a mother for over 10 years now. After watching my older son barely escape breaking just about every bone in his body, I thought it would have to happen sooner or later.

Fortunately we're still waiting for later.

Our ward (local church congregation) had just finished up a party where all my kids'd had a wonderful time. I thought for sure they'd all fall promptly into bed and be asleep before I could finish calling out, "G'night!" No sooner had I flipped on the computer, ready to have some "Mom" time, when a wrenching cry erupted from the boys' room. My older son comes out, head tilted up, his crying emitting an odd gurgling sound. That's when I noticed the blood oozing out of his nose and mouth.

I raced him into the kitchen, doing my best to keep any and all blood from trailing down to the floor, and piled a box of tissues on his face. Folks, I've never been so frightened in my life as we went through tissue after tissue with no indication the bleeding was going to stop. As we switched fresh tissues for drenched ones I noticed his nose, normally so petit, had begun to swell. It was at that moment I thought for certain he'd broken it.

Fortunately after a few more minutes the bleeding showed signs of slowing down. I managed to get someone to watch the kids, grabbed an ice pack to place on his nose, and drove him over to the church so we could tell my husband what a fun night we were about to have (please note the sarcasm). Sadly, I even had to stop and get some gas, as this was one trip I hadn't planned on. To the hospital we finally went, and soon enough he was checked in, the nurse had taken a look at his swollen nose, and he'd had that annoying blue bracelet placed on his wrist. We went to find a seat or two in the crowded waiting room, when my son discovered Spiderman 3 was playing on the T.V. Normally I wouldn't let him watch it as I feel he's still too young, but he was injured and there was nothing else to do. There was an added bonus - neither of us could understand a word because the movie was in Spanish.

We met all sorts of people there. Most everyone brought in children who were sick. I saw so many tiny babies who were having a hard time breathing or couldn't stop coughing. One couple's daughter, who was maybe a year or 18 months, had been diagnosed with pneumonia just two weeks before. Her antibiotics had ended only two days ago, and her breathing had only gotten worse. I could see her struggle for every breath.

My son and I met a nice kid who had a great time telling us about every time he's broken a bone or his friend broke a bone. He helped wile away a good 40 minutes of the two hours we spent in that waiting room.

Around 10:30 pm my son kept asking if we could just go home. You'd better believe I said no. There was no way I was going to drive all the way up to the children's hospital and not see some form of doctor. At last we were called into a room where we....you guessed it....waited some more. I watched as the clock ticked away minute after minute. I watched as my son, who you normally can't get to sit still, began to slow down both in the rapidity of his questions as well as physically. At last he plopped down on the bed, his eyes barely able to stay open, and fell asleep. It was 11:25. At 11:35 the doctor came in (figures, right?).

I did my best to explain that my boys were playing Indiana Jones, and as Indie ran away from the bad guy he hit his nose really hard on the metal bed post (not Indiana's finest moment). We rolled the sleeping explorer onto his back where the doctor listened to his heart, checked his ears and mouth, and then tried looking up the nose. Indiana didn't notice much. He just didn't like being on his back (he's more of a stomach sleeper like his mama).

The doc basically told me there wasn't much to do at this point. An x-ray wouldn't tell us much. We really needed the swelling to go down, but so far as he could tell it didn't look as though the nose was broken (HUGE sigh of relief). I'm supposed to check it on Wednesday when the swelling has gone down more to see if it still looks all right. If I see any kind of curving of the bone I'm supposed to take him to an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat doc) to try and realign the bones before they completely set.

We got out of there around 12:30 in the morning and finally arrived back home at 1:00 a.m. He crashed for the night and I spent a few minutes trying to wind down before heading to bed myself.

My poor son now looks worse than he did that night. He's bruising all under his eye and along the bridge of his nose. The good news is it doesn't seem to be hurting him much.