Our ER Story

I was working on an awesome post last night, and was interrupted by my sweet, adorable, but uncoordinated, now 4-year-old who has a tendency to trip over her own feet crashing head first into our entertainment center. Two bloody wash cloths, a cotton ball of hydrogen peroxide, and a call to the doctor later, we were on our way to Urgent Care to get her stitched up. The cut wasn't too bad (only about a half inch long), but it was pretty deep, and we were worried about it scarring.

For some reason (naivety mostly) we thought it would be a relatively quick, painless trip. But the hospital had to close their Urgent Care, which put us in the ER. We had to wait for a few ambulances full of real trauma patients...so several (six to be exact, but who's counting) hours later, we were still in the waiting room.

Things I've learned...
1. Always take a book (I could have gotten a lot of reading done in 6 hours).
2. Always leave siblings with a babysitter. Luckily we did have the sense to do this one, and I'm sure glad we did.
3. Appreciate what you have. There's nothing like sitting in the hospital ER, to make you appreciate your blessings.
4. Some entertainment can be provided by overhearing funny one-sided cell phone conversations.
5. We humans delight in sharing the gruesome details of our hardships with each other. Case in point: I'm posting this experience on my blog.
6. The longer you stay, the more likely it is that you will meet a real character. For us, it was the guy who showed up to get his stuff that the hospital had lost during his previous visit. He decided to hang out in the ER for 6+ hours (he was still there when we left), and chat with everyone in the waiting room. He was a friendly guy, to say the least, and spent most of the time listening to every one's symptoms, diagnosing them, and offering unsolicited medical advice. (I wonder if he ever got his stuff).
7. Twinkies at 4:00 in the morning make a pretty good snack. *Side note here. I haven't had a Twinkie for a while, but I seem to remember them having more cream.*
8. I would rather spend hours in the ER than be a contestant on
Fear Factor. (Is that show even still airing)?
9. I would rather spend hours in the ER than have to take my kids to the ER.

Once we got back to a room, everything went well, and relatively quickly. Ella did great. She only need 2 stitches. The doctor, and the nurse that helped us were awesome.

So that's our story. I believe everyone needs a good (and by "good" I mean a un-scary, non-traumatic, but terribly inconvenient, and kind-of-funny-when-you-look-back-on-it) ER story, if nothing else so you can share it when someone brings up their ER story. It's how we humans like to bond.