So there is no break in the boy's hand that they could see. Unfortunately, the growth plate area shows up as a dark place on an xray and needs a couple of days to calm down before they can tell if something is fractured. So the boy is in a splint that is wrapped up with an ace bandage. His fingers look like bloated little sausages and the bruising is snaking its way up his fingers. I will not be shocked if he gets a cast for a bit. He is in quite a bit of pain.
To say that our trip to the ER was uneventful would be a lie. It was very strange, as most ER visits are, and we were never bored. The billboard for the hospital ER advertised a 17 minute wait, so we chose to go there over the child based hospital. Guilt was felt, but we wanted close and quick. Several people had masks as our fair city is one of the flu epicenters of the southeast, according to the national news. "Don't. Touch. Anything." The boy was threatened with this phrase over the course of three and a half hours. One forgets that even though it may say 17 minutes for your wait, triage is a pwerful thing and a little boy with a janked up hand was not as important as the following...of which I can't argue with hospital staff over. They needed to go first.
1. An elderly woman who shook the room and moved her wheelchair with her unearthly and bone chilling cough. Her healthy family members wore masks to be around her. She went first.
2. The father-son duo wearing masks. The boy was a cute little thing with his little glasses and his mask on. He kept coming over and asking the boy what was wrong with him. The "fluphobe" in me was dying to throw myself over my son to cover him up, but I did not. The boy's father committed a grave misstep in my book of parental no no's: he allowed his son to play on the floor of the hospital waiting room. I really don't consider myself a germaphobe, but come on.
3. The woman who came in with the darkest sunglasses and a ball cap pulled down over her eyes. We all wondered if she was there to be treated or rob the place. Her husband then explained to us that she has a "military spine" that has no natural curve in it and causes neck problems which cause horrible migraines. His Big Gulp sized container of ice that he crunched their whole stay did not fare well with her head. She needed to be in a dark room. STAT.
4. The weirdest was a gentleman whose female companion came in and spoke to the desk people. They then sent a quartet of male staffers out with a wheelchair and a box of various medical devices to retrieve someone in a van. Two minutes later some of them return with an empty wheelchair. They got a gurney and went back out. Soon, they came back in with someone we could hear all the way outside. The hub told the boy to cover his eyes and I covered his ears. They brought a man on the gurney, laying on his belly and screaming at the top of his lungs. The man's female companion was downing tiny boxes of Nerds as the man screamed. We were confused by her reaction. The boy is scarred I think. We saw the guy an hour and a half later, still on his belly on the gurney, still quite vocal. I have to believe a substance of some kind was involved.
5. A lady got called back with us. She had ordered a church pew off of a yard sale on Facebook. She couldn't wait for her huusband to get off of work, so she tried to unload it herself. Bad call. Dropped it on her foot. Luckily for her, it damaged part of the nerve so half her foot was numb. Her friend called us over to look at it. The bone was just seconds away from breaking through the skin and the whole thing was black with some accents of purple. It was gnarly. The nerve must have been damaged, but she was in a fairly jolly mood. She and her friend involved our half of the waiting room to participate in helping them be successful in Trivia Crack play on her phone. Gotta make friends in there.
I hope all the people are feeling better today. Would be so curious as to know what brings a man in, belly down, on a gurney. Can't lie. Oh well. We'll deal with the boy's hand however we must. Poor guy. All he said was, "I got tripped and landed funny on my hand...but I assisted in a goal". That's commitment for you.
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