It was an otherwise ordinary, normal day Thursday morning. Tony's mom was getting ready for her flight home after hanging out with the fam for a week and enjoying the grandkiddies, Tony was bopping around with his bluetooth on which makes me assume he's on a work call but it could just be for decoration ;) I got my "long" shower that morning where I got to wash my hair (yeah, I pretty much only wash it once a week, maybe twice, anymore - no time to dry it properly and if I don't it looks like ASSSS!) so I was running around a la towelhead in the kitchen trying to make my coffee. Tyler was running around outside in the backyard since Tony was actually downstairs in the playroom/office which is just in the door to the garage from the backyard. Hmmm, let me clarify for those who have never been to Casa Baer. Two story house atop the garage, so three levels in a way. Garage spans entire length of house and out the back door is the yard and then stairs leading up to the porch and french doors off the kitchen. The yard is technically small (according to the suburbanites) but decent sized by SF standards, esp. since having a yard at all in SF is a big deal. It's not very kid friendly, which after Thursdays incident we're probably going to change, and is greatly covered in brick with a thick border of plants, weeds and trees...and a nice cement fountain that's all green from not being used (my mom asked about that recently after battling mosquitos at night and wondering if there was standing water in our yard because of the danger of West Nile - ReeReeRee (scary movie sound effect)!!) and a few other eclectic statues, decor that I added to make the yard look more like ME. It's nice and quaint, esp. if you can hold your nose to prevent the lingering stink of doggie poo from burning your nostril hairs! Hahaha, well it's not that bad when it's all cleaned up but boy does Boris poop a lot! We keep threatening to sew up his butthole or trade him in for a dog that doesn't poop but he doesn't listen.
ANYWAYZ...I'm minding my own business when the sound of Tyler crying hits my ears and for half a second I thought "I'm sure he's fine and besides Tony is downstairs and I'm trying to make my coffee" but then survival mom instinct kicks in, as well as the recognition that this cry isn't quite right. Oh my gosh, I'm getting the chills and a quasi panic attack reliving this right now. I rush downstairs in my slippers and towelhead to see my child trying to stand up as he wipes the blood POURING DOWN HIS FACE!!! I pick him up and that's when I see under all the blood a gaping gash on his right temple. I call out to Tony who was on his way over anyway and tell him I need something to stop the bleeding. Tyler is crying rather hysterically, although interestingly he "seems" most concerned with the fact that he dropped one of his cars. So I pick up the car and covering his would with my hand we race upstairs to the bathroom where Tony brings us a towel to use as a compress - after we soaked through several wads of paper towels thinking that would be enough. I'm sitting with Tyler on my lap on the toilet, still crying, as I'm holding the towel against his head and tell Tony he's going to need stitches and we need to go to the hospital asap! I was as calm as I could have been, which was fairly calm, since what I really wanted to do was scream at the top of my lungs for Tony to call 911 because our child was dying in my arms! The shred of rational thinking in my head told me it was just a cut and though it would need stitches he wasn't going to die, his brains weren't oozing out, he hadn't lost consciousness, he wasn't throwing up or convulsing...geez, did I really need to paint those pictures?? I had to be calm for him, my fears were secondary as are most things now that I'm a parent which has taken getting used to. I rocked him and told him in a lighthearted voice that he must have taken a nasty fall to get that yucky cut on his noggin but it was all going to be ok, we were going to take care of it. I figured downplaying it was the best for both of us. Tony called Kaiser who wanted to ask him some questions about Tyler's status and the injury but that didn't go over well with Tony who it seems may have been experiencing some of my same internal panic. Well, no, I don't think he was panicked but I'm sure he was frustrated since he just wanted a quick answer about whether we should take Tyler to the emergency room or if his doctor could see him right away. St. Luke's is just 2 blocks away from our house so we decided just to take him to the ER there. Tony got my shoes & removed the towel from my head, loaded Sophie, her suitcase and Teagan into the car - a small amount of humor in the moment was overhearing Tony in the other room trying to strap Teagan into her car seat and exclaiming "Are you kidding?!" since she's so small & squirmy & seemingly fragile and therefore very difficult to strap in and I think I'm the only one who has done it so far!
Tony dropped Tyler & I at the ER doorstep and raced to get his mom to the airport on time. It was the ER receptionist's birthday as told by all balloons and streamers around her desk which just seemed garish in light of the environment. I tried to imagine (more disassociating myself from the real situation at hand) what it would be like to have her job, let alone work it on my birthday, the things she must see... I had high hopes of this being a quick ER visit but then I guess "quick" and "ER" don't ever really go together. Despite what looked like quiet, empty halls apparently they were slammed due to 5 ambulances arriving just before us! Oh Tyler, why couldn't you have fallen 30 minutes earlier? Well, I would have been in the shower and... whatever. It's not like I had anywhere to be, in fact as crazy as it sounds (and of course I would have traded it for anything else) I enjoyed on some level the next 2 1/2 hours of waiting because I spent it holding & rocking my baby, kissing him and talking sweetly to him, listening to his breathing and feeling his warmth against my chest as he snoozed a little, then playing cars with him on the bed in the first room they put us in, then on the bed in the second room they put us in, then reading books to him on the third and final bed behind a curtain in the big "fast track" room they put us in. It was just me and him, circumstances aside, close mommy & Tyler time. He felt safe and calm with me and I pushed away all my stresses and traumas over the situation to be there for him - knowing full well I had a scheduled therapy appointment the next day and I could freak-out, cry and process my part of it then.
Considering what I was told about the 5 ambulances it was still fairly calm and quiet there, thank gawd! Although I did make sure to keep my eyes on the floor just in front of my feet as I was lead through the halls, peripheral vision telling me there was someone on a gurney to my left and up ahead another on my right. I think they were mostly old people and homeless people, one younger guy I think was coming off some drug related drama though even that wasn't much to see. I just HATE hospitals and especially the ER with all their beeping equipment and sterile smelling halls, knowing people go through such pain there, whether they're the ones on the gurney or their family in the waiting room. I supposed good things must happen there too, but it all has to stem from something bad initially.
The physicians assistant on duty was very nice, despite my making a knee-jerk judgement before he even opened his mouth that he was going to be a grumpy creep. He was very good with Tyler, as was the nurse, although that strange intern that was following the nurse around like a puppy dog rubbed me a little wrong.
He was very tall, young and had a name that explained to me why English sounded like his second language. The nurse taped a cotton ball soaked with numbing juice on Tyler's temple and we waited 20 minutes for it to do its thing. Then the moment I was dreading was upon us...gather all your strength Tiff, here we go! They decided to papoose Tyler so he wouldn't flail around, although I was pretty sure he wouldn't have given his temperament, but you never know. He didn't like that at all, despite my reassuring him that it would feel warm and cozy and be just like little sister. My poor sweet baby all burrito'd up now had fear in his eyes and my heart was on the floor, but wonderfully at that moment Tony showed up, pushing Teagan in the stroller and I was relieved of my duty. Not that I didn't want to be by Tyler's side when they stitched him up or that I couldn't handle it and actually I felt a little sad that suddenly Tyler wanted Daddy by his side. Although he was crying out both our names while they stitched him, Tony right by his side and me leaning in from behind holding little sister telling him how brave he was being and that it was almost over. And soon it was, and stickers in hand Tyler was doing fine.
As we strolled slowly home hand-in-hand, my hair now looking like a total fro, Tony pushing the stroller with Teagan on ahead, I mused at the Right of Passage I just went through as a parent. I mean, come on, how many of us actually made it through childhood without getting stitches or broken bones or some other medical drama that had our parents rushing us to the ER? Not me! A big bench swing hit me in the nose when I was little and I had a few stitches between my nostrils, a friend's poodle (angry little creatures!) bit me and tore open my lip requiring several stitches (and an awkward lipstick line as an adult), I hit my head on the coffee table at my babysitter's after I was told to stop spinning around because I would get dizzy and fall and hit my head which interestingly is in the same spot Tyler will have his scar - which I hope is as faint as mine. There was that rather embarrassing accident in my grade school years where I was riding my bicycle in the neighborhood, looked down at my pedals for a moment and then up just in time to put up my hand and avoid a much uglier accident as I rode into a parked truck which resulted in several stitches at the base of my thumb. My mom and I had a good chuckle over that one as we recounted all the stitches I required through childhood after I told her the story of Tyler's first battle wound. But anyway, I guess that's life. Our bodies, and lives, are by far invincible. If you trip and fall and hit your head on a concrete step, as Tyler did, your skin splits and blood comes out. If I'm super lucky this will be the only such incident with Tyler, but somehow I doubt that will be the case. And then there's Teagan, she's surely gonna bash up herself at some point too. Ugh. This parenting thing can be for the birds sometimes. The pain of watching your child go through these things and not being able to do anything about it. Of course there will be psychological pain as well, maybe Teagan won't ever break a bone or need stitches but it's highly likely her little heart will be broken some day by some shitty boy who doesn't even know she's alive and she'll cry and cry in my arms. Dude, this is nuts!
And on that note, I hear my little girl crying now, only this pain will be easy to fix - just stick a boob in her mouth!
No comments:
Post a Comment