Lesson learned: Don’t skip a post

Last week there was no blog. Uproar! The masses were irate! Where is the blog? How could you not write something?

There was just nothing worth writing, I whined. Nothing happened last week. We were living life and it was a grind. Woe is me. Woe are the masses. Woe.

That was a mistake because then something had to happen this week.

I had work travel scheduled. It happens but once per year. I had been looking forward to it, a little. It’s always hard, logistically, you must arrange childcare, you must tweak the training schedule, there are meals, rides for after school activities, Hubs needs to be in town. But we made it work. Everything was planned.

I decided to leave the house at 3:30 on Monday. I don’t know why, but I wanted to leave after the kids were home from school. During lunch Hubs even suggested I head out early, get there in time to catch dinner with a few co-workers. That would be easier, but I decided I was going to stick with the plan. Get the kids off the bus, say goodbye, leave.

As part of our lunch news bulletin, he notified me that our new healthcare plan kicked in on September 1st, and that we had a very tiny lapse between the old one and the new one.* He preferred if we did not have to see a doctor during this period. I shrugged. We’re 11 days away, we haven’t been to a doctor in months, no big deal, we’ll make it.

1:30 the school calls me. For sure one of my kids is throwing up, I think. It’s the second week of school and I’m getting a call from the nurse. There’s nothing else it could be.

It was the nurse but it was not vomit. Usually when the nurse calls, she presents the facts and then leaves it up to parental discretion. Like, hey your kid has a stomach ache, she’s laying on the bed in here, she doesn’t have a fever, do you want to come get her? Or, well he has a blister but it’s not bleeding and I put a bandaid on it, do you want me to do anything else?

This was different. “Your son fell down in gym and hurt his arm. He is in a lot of pain. You need to come get him and take him in for an x-ray.”

This was very direct.

We have the sweetest school. The best teachers, most loving staff. I truly adore that place. Our principal was sitting in a chair next to B chatting about football and distracting him. I shot a glance to the nurse and she was waving a hand over her own arm and mouthing the word “lumpy” at me.

He said he heard it pop, and when he stood up, his arm was bent the wrong way. Apparently he wasn’t worried until the gym teacher walked him to the nurse’s office. The gym teacher never walks kids, he always sends another kid as escort. So he reasoned, if he was walking him, it must be bad.

Benji is a stream of consciousness kid, and he likes to dabble in hypotheticals. As such, most of our conversations are one-sided but should I not provide the proper response I am reprimanded, severely. The following is a real conversation (if you can call it that):
“What if I lived on a cloud, but it was a really small cloud, and that’s why I broke my arm, because I lived in a cloud but fell off the cloud. And while I was falling down, my parachute, because everyone who lived in cloudland would have a parachute, didn’t open up, but then I hit a tree. Except in the tree are a bunch of ducks. Tree ducks. And oh Mom, this one time I was listening to an audio book about ducks who cleaned chimneys, and you remember that movie with the two little kids and the magical lady? You know, the one with the umbrella and chalk? Yeah, Mary Poppins, that’s right, anyway she lived in a cloud so that’s why I would live in a cloud.” (you can see how he came full circle there, with the clouds)

I play my part, with “mhms” and “that would really be something” and “I guess I just don’t know.” Our drive to urgent care was full of this chatter, mixed with a lot of “ows” and “can you please stop hitting every bump in the road” and “I can’t wait ’til they fix my arm and it stops hurting.” I had to interject at this one.

“Dude. Your arm is broken. Like, it’s not going to just stop being broken.”
“WHAT!?”
*bursts into tears*
“Uhhhh. I mean you’re the one who told me it was bent the wrong way. I just assumed you knew…”
“I’m SO SAD!”

Our local urgent care is drastically misnamed. There is nothing urgent about it. In fact, you have to call ahead and make an appointment. This fact, alone, I feel should disqualify it from using the adjective ‘urgent.’ Even with an appointment, you’ll be waiting at least an hour. I had the foresight to ask Hubs to make the appointment while I was on the way to the school. We showed up an hour early for the appointment. A fact the check-in lady made sure to point out to me.

“Well it’s 1:45 and your appointment is at 2:45.”
“Yes. I am aware of that. But I can’t very well sit at home with this dangling arm kid. So I might as well sit here.”
“Okay, but we can’t get him in early, we’re very busy.”
(I made sure to casually glance over my shoulder at the waiting room with one person in it)
“Alrighty then.”

We sat down, enjoying the lovely programming of the Food Network on TV. Benji then requested a pillow for his arm to rest on. I sprang into action. Little did I realize this would be the first of 4,847 requests to fetch things for him. Had I known, there would have been less springing and more moseying.

I approached the helpful front desk again…
“Is it possible I could have a pillow from one of the rooms? As I’m sure you’re aware, my son has a broken arm.”
*hint hint*
“And while he’s sitting there with a broken arm, a pillow might ease his pain.”
*hint hint*

Like, maybe Mr. Sniffles over there in the corner could wait a hot second so my broken kid can be seen.

To her credit, she obliged and provided an ice pack. I sat back down.

“Hey Mom. While you were up there, did you ask for the remote?”
“What? Why would I ask for the remote?”
“You said watching the Food Network makes you hungry so I figured you wanted to change the channel to a kids show or something.”
“Oh. I see. Well I did not ask for the remote.”
*pause*
“Well you could now.”
“Um. I think they put the TV on their preferred station, bud. But I can go ask how much longer until we get seen.”
“Okay, and while you’re up there, ask for the remote.”

I did not ask for the remote.

They splinted him up and did a great job. But I chose that moment to panic over every choice I’d made to bring us to this point in life of being in urgent care getting a splint and should I have gone to the ER instead? I then spammed every contact in my phone related to the medical field with gross x-ray pictures and asked what I should do and “did this look like it needed surgery?” If you were the recipient of one of those texts, I apologize. If you were not the recipient of one of those texts but feel you should have been, I also apologize.

We were able to get into an ortho the next morning to get the cast. She was fantastic, excellent bedside manner, had us both chuckling by the end of the appointment. Turns out she lives near us and when he was choosing his cast print and changed his mind from stars and stripes to camo she burst out, “Camo! He’s a Botetourt boy for sure.”

We don’t live in the city. There is a lot of camo around us. We are not ashamed of that.

I fed the children tortilla chips and shredded mozzarella cheese for dinner that night. In my mind, it was nachos. We just never made it to the melted part, or the meat part.

The next day I was texting with my coach about moving my training schedule around, since I was staying in town instead of traveling. He expressed concern for the whole situation and asked if I wanted to stick close to home so I could be with my broken kid. (as in, not doing a long run, or going to the Y to swim, that sort of thing) and I said, “oh no, he’s already back at school. He was adamant that he return as soon as possible and show off his cool cast.” He replied with, “lol, gotta get those aura points from his buddies.”**

………

I had no idea what that meant. I ignored it, which is my usual approach rather than express ignorance. I later confessed to him I had to google that term and that he should stop trying to make me feel old because we’re actually the same age, and who is he trying to kid?

He admitted to only recently learning about it but assumed, as I had school-aged children, I would be hip with the cool kid slang.

I responded, “my kid tripped and broke his arm. I don’t really see the cool crowd being in his future.”

That is perhaps B’s greatest lament. He has no epic story to justify the injury.

That was Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday began the third longest day of my life. Which I’ll tell you about next week because I really need to walk away from this for a while.

*to eliminate any unnecessary fretting, our healthcare did not lapse, all is well
**aura points, according to google, are a lighthearted way to measure how cool someone is