a monday morning giggle

My friend, Steel Magnolia, just spent some time in the ER with her younger boys. Luckily, the Slackers have only had to do the ER thing once in our 3+ years of parenting. And, while Steel Magnolia came away from her trip with an amazing perspective on parenthood...well, we came a way with a funny (and totally tasteless) story. So, here it goes.

Two years ago, when E was about 16 months old, we were playing outside and blowing bubbles on the front steps. E sat down facing the house, lost her balance, and proceeded to tumble backwards off the brick porch, down two steps to the cement walkway. Though she seemed fine, I called the ped's office to see what I should do. They told me to monitor her and if she vomits more than three times, to call back.

For the rest of the day, E was fine. Happy as a clam, no ill effects. But at dinner, she threw up. We chalked it up to maybe her food going down the wrong pipe. Then she threw up two more times. By the time the on-call ped called back, it was 9 pm and E was snuggled safely in her bed...but they wanted us to take her to the ER just in case. So we scooped her up in her feety pajamas and headed out.

The ER itself was great. They had a separate pediatric unit and we were seen fairly quickly. However, E was not so keen on this whole thing. Pretty much every thing they tried to do to her -- take her temperature, get her blood pressure, check her heart -- was meet with screams, wails and full-on thrashing. Somehow they got through the initial check and detmermined that, just to be safe, they would have to give her a CAT scan. But because you had to be totally still in the CAT Scan, they would give her some medicine to make her drowsy.

The medicine they wanted to give her was a suppository.

So, now it was me, John and the nurse all struggling with E to try and get this suppository in. I had the arms, John had the legs and the nurse was trying to...uh...administer the thing. As soon as the nurse would start to get the suppository in, E would push it out.

"Wow, she's got a really strong sphincter," the nurse remarked.

In all the commotion going on, John misheard the nurse and thought she said something to the effect of "Wow, she's really strong." So, he replied,

"Yeah, you should see her mother."

Luckily, the nurse was able to get the medicine in and quickly left, E fell asleep and was able to get the CAT scan done (she was fine) and John remained happily oblivious to what he had really implied with his statement (until I told him on the way home). And, I...well...let's just say I'm glad that we haven't had to go back to that ER since.