Don’t Get Lippy With Me, Pal
Dad Gone Mad | March 29Ever the over-achiever, my son tried to catch a baseball with his face this weekend. Didn’t work out real well for him. He came wobbling into the house, bleeding from his bottom lip, crying hysterically, drooling like a teething camel and trying to call out to me through his hysteria. The sound that came out was “Dadeeyeeyeeyee…”
(For the sake of clarity, I define “hysteria” as the spirited, uncontrollable crying that causes those quick little uncontrollable inhales – the kind where you accidentally suck your bottom lip into your mouth and make a “thiff” sound.)
When I was finally able to get him to chill, I looked into my son’s mouth and found a deep cut on his lower lip and a chipped tooth. We iced it and dabbed at it and applied pressure, but after three hours, it was still bleeding. I called a couple of friends who are doctors – including one who is a gastroenterologist, which means he specializes in pulling big, black dildos out of peoples’ asses with a very expensive probe – and they each said it was time to take him in to the emergency room.
This did not go over well with my son, who, like me, equates “hospital” with “shot” and “catheter” and “prostate exam.” But I told him that we’d stop for ice cream on the way home – and also that I don’t think five-year-old boys have prostates – so he acquiesced. By this time, his bottom lip was swollen to twice its normal size and there was blood caked in the corners of his mouth and, honestly, it was grossing my queasy ass out.
When we got to St. Fuckface Hospital and Medical Center, it was raining outside. I picked up my son and ran into the ER, not stopping until we got the admissions window, where we were greeted by a woman who appeared to have been eating McDonald’s French fries incessantly for the last three decades. Her nametag said “Wilma.”
“May I help you?” she mumbled.
“Yes. My son has a split lip and it has been bleeding for several hours,” I said.
She looked at me, said nothing. The expression on her face changed instantaneously from disinterested to inquisitive. She then began to recite a checklist of questions about how the injury occurred and if I was present when it happened and various other specifics that were clearly leading to a diagnosis that I BEAT UP MY SON.
“I think we’ve answered enough questions now,” I snapped. “My son’s lip is bleeding. Can we see a doctor please?”
“Certainly,” Wilma said. Her tone was curt and not at all understanding. “You may enter through the door on the left. A triage nurse will meet you there.”
I picked up my son and walked in the direction to which she had pointed. “Thanks, Wilma,” I said. “Say hey to Fred and Barney for us.”
The evening progressed in the same fashion in which it had started. We were passed from triage nurse to ER nurse to ER physician, each asking the same questions, each scaring my son a little more, each stepping right up the brink of accusing me of bashing my son’s face in without actually doing so.
After the doctor said that the cut had finally clotted and my son wouldn’t need a stitch, we were escorted to the room where patients fill out the paperwork that tells the hospital it call bill the insurance company an exorbitant fee for doing nothing but looking into my son’s mouth and essentially saying, “Yep, that’s a mouth alright.” In this room, I was asked to sign a stack of forms about insurance and liability and then one about child abuse, which I interpreted as a legal, documented version of that hand-gesture De Niro pulls with Ben Still in Meet The Parents – the one where he makes a “V” with his index and middle fingers and swings them back and forth between his own eyes and Gaylord Focker’s, as if to say “I am watching you.”
Then we left in a huff and got some god-damned ice cream.
Needless to say, my son has been restricted from ever playing baseball again.
I heard some actresses pay good money for this service.
I had this happen more times than I care to remember. I was constantly talking like Mushmouth on Fat Albert during the summer.
This happened to my parents once, when I was a baby…
To put this in context - my parents married very young (my mother was 18, my dad 21) and I (the firstborn) arrived a couple of months after my mom’s 20th birthday. So, as young parents, when I, as a nine-month-old, spiked a very high fever, they took me straight to the ER on the pediatrician’s advice.
The nurses at the ER took, as my mom tells it, a VERY dim view of the situation. While I was going into triage, they deliberately separated my parents and then cornered my young mother. “Okay, can you tell me what’s REALLY wrong?” one of them demanded of her.
My mother was stunned. “She has a fever,” she answered. It was clear what they were after - checking for any child abuse - but they hadn’t even BOTHERED to look at the complaint. They just saw young parents + young baby + ER visit = child abuse. When my mom said “fever”, they all backed off.
According to my mother, they later banned her from the exam room so they could take my temperature rectally. My mom told them that she could hold me and make sure that I would stay still. Oh noooo, they were professionals, and they could handle it. Ten minutes later, the on-call pediatrician came out to get my mother. “She’s gotten the better of them, and you can come back in here,” he told her. Ha ha! I exacted a little revenge for my parents. ;)
I believe Eric at More Diapers was actually accused of something by the hospital.
Here’s his story… http://morediapers.com/2005/03/11/i-appologize-on-behbespectacledal-of-childrens/
I’m feeling better and better than when my tooth went through my lip (due to my own childish foolishness that once and for all answered the question “why CAN’T I lean back in the chair in which I am sitting backwards?”) my MD dad decided no ER was needed, he could sew me up himself. Before it came to that, he and my mom re-assessed and decided to just give me ice and let me heal on my own. Though now I’m thinking I should have negotiated for ice cream up front.
Hey, I spent some time in Saint Fuckface’s
Took a short hop in the second grade that busted my lip open. Was the coolest kid in school for about thirty seconds.
Sounds scary. Glad to hear you son is doing well. I’m not sure how I would react if someone was accsuing me of child abuse. I guess I’d rather have them ask too many times than nothing at all. I want the hospital to catch as many child abusers as possible and that means quite a few innocent people will have to suffer.
I was gonna bring up Eric’s experience from way back. He felt teh same way as you did. I’m not sure there is a better way to do it though. They could be much nicer but perhaps they are too disgusted by the child abusers they do catch to remain neutral.
Have a great weekend
AD
It’s tough, isn’t it? You want hospital staff to watch out for situations of abuse, obviously. Nobody wants kids to just get patched up and then go home for another beating! And yet when it’s YOU being asked these insulting and aggravating questions while your child is waiting in pain, it’s enough to make you reach over the desk and strangle the person. Which is slightly counterproductive.
Dr.-you-know-who thinks they WAY over reacted on your ass. Must be an OC thing. A bit fascist down there, no? Poor little slugger. I hope he’s doing much better by now. Hope you are too.
I know what you’re talking about. My daughter was in a car accident when she was 7 months old and she had a traumatic brain injury. The doctors couldn’t figure out exactly what happened to her, but they said the injury was similar to shaken baby syndrome. You can guess what happened next. Even though I had a totalled car and a broken scapula, there was some thought that we were shaking her. The doctor said Child Protective Service MIGHT call us, and also said you never want to get into their files, because they will never leave you alone. Thankfully, they didn’t contact us, and never have. I understand the need to look out for children, but this paranoia about kids getting injured - they’re kids, they get injured occasionally! - is a little crazy, especially when in Arizona CPS has allowed plenty of kids to remain in clearly abusive homes. Silly.
Let your son play baseball!