Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Thursday Thirteen # 46







Thirteen Things about my manic Monday

 


  1. I have tried and tried to come up with a jazzy, ironic, funny title for this post.  I am utterly unable to do so.  It was just that sort of a day.  Actually, it was a pretty low-keyed day until about 4:30 PM, when I discovered that the twins had gotten into the refrigerator and were having a party with raw eggs and yogurt in the middle of the kitchen floor.  Twins in tub!
  2. I washed them both down well and thankfully had rinsed them off.  They were playing in the clean water, swimming and doing cute things.  I was in the bathroom, reading (yes, quality time) but otherwise not paying attention.  David fell down a couple of times and got back up, fine and dandy.  I told him to "Be careful" and continued reading.  He fell again and this time started crying hard.  And thus the fun began.
  3. When he started crying hard, I looked up and said, "Awww...did you get a boo-boo?  Let Mommy see," and I pried his hand away from his face, preparing to kiss the boo-boo.  What I saw made me let out a blood-curdling scream, which led to a blood-curdling scream from each of the twins.  If it hadn't been so horrible at the time, it would have been a classic movie moment.  The girls ran upstairs to see what was going on.  What was going on was that David had gashed his nose open right between the eyes.
  4. When I say 'gash', I mean gash.  It was at least a quarter of an inch deep and it looked as though part of his nose was caved in.  Scared me half to death, as evidenced by the fact that I screamed at first.  I quickly grabbed my cell phone (also in the bathroom, quality time being what it is), wetted a wash cloth, grabbed David to apply the wash cloth and called the pediatrician's office.  I told the receptionist what had happened and she asked if I could bring him in at 5:15.  I said, "What time is it?"  "5:00"  "No, I can't make it by 5:15."  "How about 5:30?"  "Yes, thank you." Click.
  5. The orders started immediately:  "Rachel!  Take Zidy out of the tub and get her dressed.  Abby!  Get your shoes and coat on!  Sarah!  Help me get David dressed."  Meanwhile, I put Neosporin and a bandage on his nose as it continued seeping blood.  We got out of there, dressed to the shoes, in 5 minutes flat.  FlyLady would have been proud of us.
  6. The whole way there, I prayed for me to drive safely, for Dave's nose to be ok, and for us not to run into any traffic, as we were cutting it close.  As it happened, David stopped crying, took his bandage off, and babbled to Zidy.  There was not much traffic and we were scheduled to arrive on time....here's the part of the movie where the stressed music starts.  I got to the street where the office is-to find it closed because of construction.  The sign directed me to another street which I knew didn't go near the office.  I made a quick turn into a hotel parking lot to figure out what to do.  As I sat there thinking, I realized that I could see the office building from where I was parked.  It was across a large field that didn't look too overgrown.  So I ordered the girls out of the car and told them to start across the field while I got the twins out of their car seats.  We all booked it across this boggy field and made it only a couple of minutes late to the appointment.  Of course, it took them 30 minutes to get us to the back (WHY?), then 10 minutes to wait to see the doctor.  Who looked at him, told me to take him to Urgent Care to be stitched up.  For this we waited 40 minutes?  Why not tell us when we WALK IN, for Pete's sake!
  7. So we started out for Urgent Care, which was 20 minutes further along from our house.  Along the way, Sarah offered to make dinner for us when we got home.  I thought about that kind offer and was about to answer her when this thought popped into my head:  "Did I turn off the burner under the eggs when we left?"  I asked the girls, no one knew.  I thought madly for a while, all the while feeling the tension rising in my chest.  Will the house burn down?  Should I turn around?  Did I even turn on the burner?  I don't remember, I don't remember!"  Finally I told the girls they should pray that I didn't turn the burner on the stove.  When I said that, Sarah said, in a hesitant voice (don't kill the messenger, Mom), "I think you did, Mom."
  8. At this point, we were at the exit that we needed to take to get to Urgent Care.  I took the exit, whipped back around, and started back for home, about a 30 minute drive, castigating myself all the while for having left the stupid burner on under the eggs.  If I had any doubts about it, they were cast aside when I opened the door and the smoke billowed out.  Have you ever smelled eggs that are burnt?  Trust me, you don't want to.  The stench was acrid and sulphuric.  I turned off the burner and immediately started opening doors and windows and turning on the fans to air out the house.  Keziah had fallen asleep in the car so I carried her in, put her in bed, and told the girls to stay home and wait for either me or Friend Husband to come home (of course, he was working late that night, but fortunately for us, not very late).
  9. I made us pb&j, washed some grapes, and leaped back into the car with David.  He ate his supper while I called Friend Husband and aprised him of all that had happened in the past couple of hours.  He was amazed, to say the least.  I pack more living into 2 hours than some people pack into a week!  We eventually made it to Urgent Care, signed in, and waited.
  10. There are always such interesting people waiting at Urgent Care (yes, that's meant to be sarcastic).  There was a couple in the "well child waiting room" that I talked to for a while.  They had a 6-month-old baby and 12-year-old twins.  We talked about twindom while watching the various members of one family file in and out of the back room (what's going on?) and listening to some strident voice yell at his toddler in the sick child area.  After about 90 minutes of waiting, they called us back for the requisite weigh-in and questions...then they looked at his nose.  They decided (as our pediatrician had hours ago) that Dave needed stitches to close the wound and applied a topical numbing gel, a bandage, and sent us out to wait in the waiting room again.
  11. David was pretty much bouncing off the walls by this time.  One of my fears when he gets hurt is that someone is going to think I'm abusing him.  He spent last night running into walls, falling flat on his face, and generally being goofy.  The nurses laughed at him and said, "Yep, we see how he got hurt."  He also got to see lots of babies, which he loves.  It was amazing that, while he had this gaping hole in his face, he was smiling and talking to everyone.  He's such a trooper!
  12. He continued to be a trooper when they called us back to do the stitches.  We got Dave up on the table and the table lifted up so the doctor didn't have to bend over to do the work and waited and waited and waited for the doctor.  The nurse finally popped her head out and said, "We need Dr. Karen.  We've got a toddler in here that needs stitching."  Meanwhile, David was playing with the toys that Nurse Diane had given him.  We put the straight jacket things around his feet so he couldn't roll off as easily and then Nurse Diane asked me if I wanted to put the rest of him in the restraints.  Knowing how much David loves to be physically restrained, I asked if we could just hold him and see if that worked.  He did marvelously!  Both the nurse and the doctor said that they had never seen a child get stitches as easily as he did (hope that's not a harbinger of things to come!)  While Doctor Karen stitched him up, Nurse Diane held his head steady and I held his hands.  Once he said, "Mama, I stuck!"  I laughed and said, "I know you're stuck, honey.  We want you to be stuck for a while."  Once I asked him if he wanted me to sing him a sleepy song.  He and the doctor said yes, so I started singing "I Am A Poor Wayfaring Stranger", which is what I sing to the twins when they're going to sleep.  I got to the chorus of the first verse and he said, "No sing song!"  Everybody's a critic!
  13. We finally got home at 11PM and I put David to bed.  On the way to put myself to bed, I noticed a bump on my collarbone and thought, "Man, it's too early for mosquitoes!"  I went to bed and woke up to generalized itchiness which spread throughout the day.  Hives.  What could be the cause?  Stress, my doctor says.  Or spring allergies.  Or any number of other things that we may never be able to pinpoint.  So my whole body is a writhing red mass of itchiness (except for the inside of my mouth and the bottoms of my feet)...Lovely end to a lovely day.




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8 comments:

Sonja Foust said...

Lord, woman. You are amazing. Glad everyone is (relatively) ok after all that.

Penny said...

Oh my, you poor dear! What an adventure! That is what the Bangles would call Just Another Manic Monday!

Hope he heals up quickly!

Happy TTing!

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be able to come up with a title for your (mis)adventures this week. David is OK after your long day at urgent care and you have hives (stress induced for sure.)

Hope the coming weekend is much calmer.

You are, BTW, so blessed to have twins!

Raggedy said...

What a day you had!
I can picture all the running around. I am glad you got him taken care of. I hope that he will make a speedy recovery.
I also hope your hives will go away soon. Yikes!
Terrific Thursday Thirteen!
My TT is posted.
Have a wonderful day!
Happy TT'ing!
*^_^
(=':'=)
(")_ (")Š
Raggedy

Barbara said...

Sounds like you had a week's worth of problems in one evening. Hope the baby is doing better today, and Mom is calm.

Check out my TT

Annie said...

Wow! Now THAT is a day and a half! So happy that your little one was such a trooper.

As for the hives, I had a bad case of them a couple years ago due to stress. Try to avoid hot showers as that encourages them to spread more instead of fade. I hope theygo away soon.

Happy TT!

Annie said...

Hi again! Re: your question in my journal-

The doctors never gave me anything for the itch. I don't remember if I picked up a cream or some allergy medicine (though my hives weren't allergy related, but stress) to help with the itch. The doctors did say to stay out of the heat, especially hot showers, as that would cause them to spread. They faded after 7-8 days.

Anonymous said...

Gah...that is definitely a Monday.

Thank goodness there's only one Monday per week!