If I ever see the ER again it will be too soon.
*sigh*
So after my finger fiasco, a few days later to be exact, Ronan took a tumble down the bottom step of our deck and when he came up he had an odd bump on the side of his elbow and his right arm was just dangling to his side in an odd way. When we moved it he cried out in pain.
It was all I could do to get it together enough to load everyone into the car and drive to the ER. I wanted to just yell, "Stop!" and have the world pause so I could throw up. I kept telling myself that breaking things, especially arms, is a routine part of childhood but seeing your babies arm just hanging, all twisty, makes you want to cry out, panic, and puke. At least it made me feel that way.
We arrive at the ER, check in, sit and wait. Ronan is acting fine and even starts to use the arm again a little bit. A nurse calls us back for an assesment.
We sit with her at a computer in a very small room. She starts rattling off a list of rountine questions and types the answers into her computer...clickty-clack....long, manicured nails beating out a peckish rythym.
"Who's his regular doctor?"
"Kambra Phoebus." I reply half aware of her and completely focused on my babe in my lap.
"And where does he or she work?" the nurse asks briskly.
I pause for a heartbeat, I'm not use to this follow up question.
"Ukiah Naturopathic Clinic" I reply but apparently this nosey nurse wants more information then that.
"And is this person a doctor?" she says if I can't tell the difference between a real doctor and a dude operating out of the back of a van in the ally way.
I take a deep breath and try to catch the nurses eye when I respond but she's still looking at the computer screen even though she's not typing, her fingers hovering above the key board waiting for my reply.
"Yes, she's an ND." I pause, the term ND does not seem to register with this nurse.
"You know, a Naturopathic doctor." I continued slowly. Come on, this is Northen California, Mendocino county for Christ's sake, how can this woman act as though I'm speaking Japanese all of the sudden.
She types something and relpies in a snarky manner, "...interesting." Her mood now is that of someone dealing with a drunk, like I'm slurring my words and she's agravated at having to deal my incoherant ass. My heart beats faster and my breath quickens, is she going to harasses us about this? Call some authority down on us like CPS and say these people don't have a "real" doctor? I swallow hard and try to steady myself. I'm suddenly aware that my focus has been completely shifted from my sick, injured babe to this nurse.
She takes Ronan's tempature and then asks if he's current on all his boosters. I should have just said yes but instead my standared response of, "We don't vaccinate." slips from my mouth before I can stop it. She goes from snarky to down right mean. She deals with us briefly and minimumly, like a relative you don't talk to asking you to pass the potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner.
I'm relieved when says we can go and wait for the doctor. As I'm gathering my things the nurse quips at us, "I feel it is my ethical responsibility," she sneers, " to tell you that baterial menengitus is going around." I'm at once puzzled and relieved. I thought by her tone and wording she was about to say, "I feel it is my ethical responsibility to call the police on your neglectful ass."
The insult however is still very much there. She felt it was her moral obligation to warn the derelict and probably unsanitary hippies before her to be careful with our unvaccinated kid as we hippy-it-up all around this plague filled county.
We waited for about another hour in the waiting room. In this time Ronan's bump goes away and even though he acts like it's tender he has full range of motion and functuality with his arm.
Another nurse comes but she doesn't identify herself as such so I mistake her for the doctor. She asks what's wrong and I tell her what happened but how it seems to be nearly fine now. She seems take aback, clutches her clip board and says, "Are you now refusing care?"
I must have looked at her like she was crazy because I was struck dumb for a moment. "No," I say, "I'm just explaining why he's acting fine now." She shows us into a room and we wait again for a doctor, we wait again for x-rays and then, about 3 hours later we leave after getting the expert opinion the equivilant of a shrug of the shoulders and essentially a "we don't know, he looks fine now". The theory is a dislocated tendon that then relocated itself.
So Ronan came in sick, healed himself, and then picked up the stomach flu before we left. He puked his guts out all yesterday, raged with a fever all night but is quite on the mend today, thank Goddess.
Not that I'm complaining about our healing crisis lately. I'm infanetly in debt to Heavenly Mother and Father that we have only had mere brushes with illlness and nothing serious. I thank my lucky stars :)
