The higher you climb, the harder you fall......

Or whatever that saying is???? Last weekend, our little mountain climber, Addyson, had a hard fall off of the kitchen table onto the hardwood floors. She climbs all the time on everything, so she's had her fair share of falls, but this was by far the hardest yet. It scared me so bad that I took her to the hospital. She became very lethargic and fell asleep promptly after putting her in the car, which is odd for her. I thought I might be over-reacting, but rather be safe than sorry. She threw up after we got there, which is not a good sign after a bad bump to the head, so I was grateful we had come. The doctor seemed very thorough and observed us for a few hours to make sure that she didn't vomit again or become lethargic again and didn't need a cat-scan. She didn't throw up again, and she actually became quite herself after a while and was miss-social, so they sent me home with instructions to keep her up as long as possible and then wake her every 2 - 3 hours to check for conciousness, and to come back asap if she vomited again. So everything was fine and she was fine the next day for all but crankiness because I'm sure she had a bad headache and she was a little lethargic, but not anything alarming. By the next day, however, she was pretty much back to normal and giving her infant motrin seemed to do the trick. She was back to climbing again.

The scariest part about the whole thing? It was definitely the ER check in. We got there and the place was all but deserted. One family was in the waiting area, but there was no one at the desk to be found. We waited and waited and a line began to form. Finally some gal came out and said...."Oh, people are here", and went back and had some goof-troop permagrin male nurse come to check us in. He smiled and actually asked how we were doing......UH....I have a 15 month old in my arms and I'm in the emergency room and I've been waiting here forever....how the @#!$%! do you think I am???? So, he gets our 411 and has us sit down and then Addyson starts peuking her guts out. I ask for help, but he and the other two people in scrubs ignore me. I asked (loudly) about 3 times for some help, then finally walked into a gals little cubicle thing and she just handed me some paper towels and didn't even look at me!!!!!!!!!!!! What the @!#$%!? So, if you know me, you know that I don't always filter what I say when I'm upset or emotional about anything, and this was one of those times, but I am proud of myself for filtering most everything, but, I, of course, couldn't restrain from being loud and sarcastic and condesending. Finally someone came to help me and said...."oh, you don't have to clean that up, we have people that do that for you".....after I'm already knee deep in vomit. Thanks lady, that would have been great to know before the 5 paper towels were thrown at me. So, the perma-grin male nurse came up like it was the best day of his life and acted like we were at a birthday party waiting to have cake, and gave Addyson a bright orange elephant, which was nice, but she and I were over it at that point. I was nice, however, and said thank you and followed the scrub-clad woman into the ER. After I actually got in a room, the doctors and nurses were wonderful and doted on Addyson, which was nice after our little fiasco in the waiting/triage area. Oh well.....after all that complaining, I'm very glad that we have a hospital so close and that the people that matter (the doctors and nurses) are actually competent. As for the check-in people that afternoon.......let's hope they don't have to learn the lesson the hard way.
I'm off my soap box.