Emergency Room

If anyone in our extended family were to be subjected to that word-association game that you see in psychiatrists' offices in old movies and sitcoms, and the good doctor were to offer the term "Emergency Room," most likely people's instant reflex would be to blurt out "Daniel!" We don't normally associate young Ian, the first-born, the cautious, the budding attorney and intellectual, with Triage. However, a couple of weeks ago, it was precisely Ian who made the latest trip with me to the ER, although he pursued the journey as only Ian could.

It all started with a good deed.

Madeleine is a very popular young lady at church, especially with somewhat older girls. And that particular Sunday, children were giving Madeleine piggy-back rides. That evening, Ian decided to follow suit, and he bent over to pick up Madeleine (who's really not dramatically smaller than him), and ended up falling forward, bumping his head against the floor. (Madeleine at first seemed to have the bigger injury, but she quickly moved on.)

Usually we wouldn't panic about a bump on the head, but he cried for a very long time. Some of this could be attributed to shock and indignation, but obviously not all. Moreover, he processes questions much the way that I do: he won't rule out any possibility - especially a bad one - unless he is completely positive that it could not be a reality. Amy did the standard flashlight-in-the-eyes routine, and his pupils performed as expected. But headache? Yes, some. Neck pain? Not sure. So Ian and I headed for the hospital.

The injury occurred a few minutes before 8:00. We went into Ask-A-Nurse mode for some time, and got into the Emergency Room around 9:00. We left sometime after 1:00 a.m.,and of course all but about 20 minutes of this was waiting time. But no possibilities were neglected. We moved to a couple of different seating arrangements in the waiting room, depending on what was going on on which TV screen. We visited the vending machine, and Ian had Life Savers picked out, followed by extensive discussion as to whether or not we should purchase them (Ian had a well-defined position on the question), etc. [Meanwhile, Amy had packed a snack for Ian, but instructed me to have him wait until some critical point in the diagnostic process - I forget which, but there was some belief that he may need to wait to eat.]

While we were waiting, Ian tended to snuggle in his own very tender way, doing things like putting his head against mine and running his fingers through my hair. In spite of the injury and the fact that we were in an Emergency Room, there was something very nice about spending the time with him. Sitting so close to me, without distractions from Daniel and Madeleine, among other factors, he got a better look at my profile, and reported his discovery that some of my hair has turned gray. This is an especially moving observation, because my hair has been graying since I was about 29, eight years before he was born, and he was only discovering it now.

Eventually, Ian had already told the check-in guy, the billing information lady, and now the triage nurse - or at least two out of three - that he hadn't eaten lunch. I discouraged him from making such public statements of dubious accuracy (I had actually gotten him some lunch at the local Greek pizzeria near church, since lunch at church was highly glutenous; I got him the "gluten-free special" of a bunless burger and some Freedom fries, and I was only finding out now that he hadn't eaten much of the burger because he didn't like it. And now half of the hospital was finding out the same thing, only without the little details about the fact that a lunch, however substandard, had actually been furnished.

In any case, the triage nurse called us in and asked all the standard questions. They tend to ask the child what had happened, partly to assess their mental acuity and partly to screen for the unthinkable, and Ian gave the injury account in his own classic way, beginning with something like: "Well I was giving my sister a piggy-back ride..." [Ian was asked whether his sister was bigger or smaller; if Madeleine had been five years older rather than younger, this could likely have accounted for the casualty by itself...] Then she took the usual questions from me about medical history, etc., and in the middle of it, Ian had a very important observation: that the calendar on the wall had the days crossed out only through Friday, February 11, when in fact today was Sunday, the 13th, and Saturday was not crossed out. I tuned into his observation because I'm somewhat doting, but I was rather surprised to see that the triage nurse stopped typing and listened intently. When Ian completed his observation, she told me she didn't think he had a concussion.

Eventually we were shown to a room, and Ian immediately set down to the important work of flipping through TV channels. He was quite concerned that there were no shows or movies for kids. I explained, in my lame way, that children's programming is somewhat rare at midnight. Ian wanted me to go out to the floor to see if I could find some qualified medical professional to help me find a kids' channel. For whatever reason, I held out on seeking their assistance. But after some effort, he found Adam Sandler's "Bedtime Stories," and seemed pretty happy with that selection. Meanwhile, I slumped down in the rocking chair next to the bed and dozed off a bit, only to wake up once or twice to find Ian sitting upright in the bed, massive channel-changer in hand, laughing and practically bouncing with appreciation at the film.

The doctor came in, and turned out to be one who saw Daniel on a previous visit a year or two ago, a hip, young-ish guy who looks like he should be working with software. Somehow, this doctor didn't react to Ian quite the way he did to Daniel; if I recall, this was the doctor who was blown away by Daniel's outpouring of toddlerishly nasal, monotone verbosity once he started asking him questions. He was friendly and got to the point, quickly establishing that young Ian didn't seem to have any indication of a concussion or neck damage. He also mentioned that they are generally loath to use the CAT scan on patients who seem unlikely to be suffering from concussions. This impressed me to no end: I had assumed that I would have to fight the hospital back from issuing the legal-tail-covering measure of universal CAT scans for anyone who might have the slightest head-bump. The nurse had said that some parents insist on CAT scans, but the hospital doesn't like to administer them unless it's high-risk; I made it clear that Amy and I are at the opposite end of the CAT-scan political spectrum.

Amidst our brief discussion with the doctor, Ian asked him the most pressing question: whether there was a way to get the Disney channel on the TV. Luckily, the doctor didn't quite hear the question, and I created as much white-noise as I needed to, to distract the ER physician from the important-but-not-critical question and get back to a few more technical, diagnosticky points.

Once we were released from the Emergency Room, the first thing that Ian wanted to do was to go back to that important vending machine in the waiting room and get those Life Savers. But I knew he was hungry, and so I had another idea: I took him straight to a place called "The Airport Diner," and we both got some food to go. This place - I had never been there before - is a very hip 24-hour diner, somewhat posh for its class of eateries, full of the indispensable art deco decor, and, because it's the airport diner, also had an airplane motif - kind of on the Kittyhawk-meets-WW II variety, and Ian did not miss the opportunity to walk around admiring all the hanging airplane pieces and pictures on display. When our food came, we got into the car and had a bit of a feast on the way home, with Ian talkative as usual, in spite of the fact that it was 2:00 a.m.

Sharing this story, I have faced the observation that we seemed to enjoy ourselves a good deal. Of course, the injury was nasty and the hospital is never fun, but aside from all that, I enjoyed Ian's company, although I would have preferred rather different circumstances. We try to have "dates" one-on-one with our children, from time to time, and in spite of the odd venue, Ian was delightful as usual - and thank God, he's okay.

(February 13, 2011)