Yet Another Trip To The ER

So there we were last night, looking forward to a quiet night with nothing going on.  I've still been really sick and under the weather and just generally trying to take it easy until someone on the good green earth can figure out what's been wrong with me.  I haven't been crafting, knitting, blogging, or singing, nothing.  Basically avoiding anything that I enjoy doing along with avoiding driving and household chores, the latter of which I haven't minding ignoring one little teensy bit.

As I said, there we were, enjoying the peace and quiet when I heard screaming.  Uh huh, the cat finally taught the little booger a lesson.  I knew what had happened as soon as I heard the crying, I just wasn't ready for what she had done to The Youngest.   He's forever picking at the animals (out of love, not meanness) and was all in her face and she scratched him.  On the eye.

Was there blood?  Oh there was blood all right, gushing and squirting from the eye in massive amounts.  You couldn't even see his eye.  Oh My God!  was all I could think, he's lost his eye! The Eldest was running around screaming for me (even though his Dad was sitting right there) and screaming "She got his eye, His eye is bleeding!"  His Dad was screaming and then I started crying while running for a towel to try and staunch the bleeding.  Total pandemonium and freak out.

Now I'm normally the very calm one in situations like this.  When the Eldest went to the ER for a broken elbow and then again for 10 stitches for a cut over his eye, I was the picture of calm.  I couldn't be shaken.  My usual philosophy of life when major crap hits the fan is, Okay, it's happened, now let's just fix it.  But that is not how I reacted last night.  I don't know if it was from all the health issues and problems that I've been having lately or the fact that my baby was all covered in godawful amounts of blood, but I lost it.  I was crying as I called 911.    By the time we got the paramedics and fire department there, the bleeding had slowed down drastically and we could see the actual eyeball.  Thank God, he still had one was all I could think.


We've had a lot of excitement on our street this week.  First, there was one firetruck and one ambulance to help me.  Then on Tuesday night, our neighbors one the big prize.  There were fifteen firetrucks on our street called to help put out a chimney fire.  Then, last night, Thursday night, we again had one firetruck and one ambulance.  Our house has become quite the talk of the neighborhood.  There's no telling what rumors are being passed around.

As a matter of fact, I became quite embarrassed when one of the firemen said, "Weren't we called here last week?"  Um, yeah. 

The EMTs checked the Youngest out and put on a great big eye-patch and determined that his eye looked okay, but we needed to get him to an ER to make sure.  At this point the little guy had gone into shock and was shivering uncontrollably in the living room chair.  He was a bit ticked off that we didn't let him ride in the ambulance to the ER and instead chose to drive him ourselves.

This is what he looked like at the ER a few hours later:

So then before we could leave to go to the hospital, one more straw was added to the camel's back.  Do you smell something burning?  We smelled something burning, something that smelled like burning plastic.   The Elf was burning!  He had appeared that morning in a very little used chandelier, the one that had been turned on in all the excitement and had been leaning up against a bulb.

I asked the paramedics if they dealt with Elf injuries, but they politely said no.  Poor Elfie.  We need an Elf burn center STAT.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch ER, they squirted a dye into the Youngest's eye and put it under a black light to determine that the cornea had not been scratched.  Nope.  Boy was this kid lucky.  But I guarantee you that his stubborn little self still hasn't learned his lesson and will be messing with the cat again asap. 

 

Hope you guys have a great weekend and I hope that we have a calm quiet one!

Multi Tasking in The Ambulance

Having a cold is no fun, but getting really sick is even less so.   If you've been wondering why I fell off the face of the planet, there's your answer.

I got to take a lovely little ambulance ride to the ER last week.  Oxygen count in the blood = very low, Blood pressure = high.  Not a fun combo to be dealing with.  Turns out, they couldn't tell me what was wrong or how to prevent it in the future and were basically clueless.  Scary.  I go in two weeks to talk to the lung doctor and we'll see if we can't narrow down the cause a bit.

Have you ever noticed that your brain works funny?  That it multitasks even when you are unable to?  I find this is more common with Moms in general due to the training that they get with the onslaught of daily chaos that children bring into their lives.

Why am I mentioning this?  Because there I was riding in the ambulance, oxygen mask on my face and barely aware of what's going on around me and I hear what one of the EMT's is saying to the hospital:  "I have a white female, approximately 45 years of age..."  That's when my brain went funny.  I wanted to sit right up and say "Oh no you dit'nt!  You did not go there.  I know you didn't just say that I look 45!"  Then I started thinking, OMG!  I'm going to have to go out and get a face lift!  I can't believe he thinks I look four years older than I am!  I mean, who did that whippersnapper think he was anyway?

All these thoughts were going on in the background as they were checking vitals,  training a fellow EMT and treating me for a heart attack "just in case" which it wasn't, thank goodness.    The front of my brain was complaining about tingling in the hands and feet and my teeth going numb.  Meanwhile that back of my brain was going all "Aunt Esther from Sanford & Son" and I wanted to pound him with my purse. 



The brain's a strange thing, isn't it?