The family..

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SouthEast, PA, United States
This Blog is all about me and my life as a mom of a beautiful 9 year old and my dear husband who entertains me as much as my girl does.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Another moment of over reaction

There have been several trips that we've taken to the emergency room since Sweetpea was born. One was absolutely necessary, one was pretty necessary, and the third was a waste of time. Well the other day I had another case of over-reacting (just a bit). I came home from work and the next door neighbor girl came running over to tell me that Sweetpea hurt her hand. I asked where she was and she said in our house. I thought, OK no big deal I'm sure DH is handling it. I proceed to walk in the house to find DH playing the Wii while Sweetpea is sitting on the sofa crying and holding her hand. I go over to survey the damage (expecting a tiny scratch - she can be a bit dramatic at times) and I see a hand that is rapidly swelling, turning lovely colors, and she's holding it oddly to the side and refuses to move it (OK that was probably due to being a drama queen). With my typical ugh tone, I say to my DH (who has 8+ years of medical experience now) - "Did you even look at this?". He looks at it and doesn't think anything is really wrong, but since I am insisting it get looked at, he agrees to take her to the ER. This time I thought ahead and called our pediatrician first. They agreed to see her immediately. We arrive within 10 minutes and they have the classic doctor's office toy - the bead maze/activity cube - what kid can resist? Off Sweetpea runs throwing the ice bag at me mid-gallop and of course the first thing she does is take the injured hand and begin spinning beads up those lovely wires. Yeah - OK -like we need to be here- she was obviously fine. Another embarrassing trip for Mom. We eventually saw the doctor who assured us that while going down the sliding board with a rope wrapped around your hand is never a good idea, it is very hard to break anything that way. I want to say I have two things in my defense. First, it was getting very black and blue in a short amount of time. Secondly(and most important), the very next day was her first day of Kindergarten. Imagine if it was broken and I sent her in without treatment. I would be remembered as a neglectful parent for the next 8 years. We would have to move or change schools or something. So now I've learned to wait at least 30 minutes before reacting as long as no blood or guts are hanging out. We'll see if I can follow that advice the next time since there's always a next time.

2 comments:

Meg M. said...

i'm an over reactor, as well. Of course, i figure it's better to OVER react than UNDER react. The hubs is usually my calm, cool, collected rock, though. We've only made one emergency trip to the ER with each child...knock on wood!!!

T with Honey said...

We have classically underreacted. One time the doc actually scolded us saying "this is why they have Emergency Rooms." Snooty, Harvard grad doctor made me feel even worse than I did.

It turns out Princess's cold was causing her to have asthma attacks and her oxygen levels had dropped. I now know that if someone is ever breathing as rapidly as 3 breaths per second you go straight to the ER. oops.