• Bad Mom,  Bug,  raving lunatic rant

    Baby Bug’s First Trip to the ER

    Why is my laptop in the kitchen on Baby Bug’s high chair? It is there because my stool has been banished to the outside patio and I need a place to sit when I play on my computer (during her nap of course). My stool, that stupid $%#!@ stool, got pulled over upon a poor baby who bruised her hand and cried bloody murder for so long and so hard that we had to take her to the emergency room.

    Yep. Baby Bug got her first trip to the ER on Sunday. What a fun way to spend the day together as a family, right? Oh no.

    I hate the ER. I know it’s a necessary evil and it could save our lives but it is the worst worst WORST place to while away your time when you are in distress. Especially when you are distressed about your little baby.

    The ER is less efficient than the DMV. It’s a cocktail of DMV style administration combined with two-hundred some stressed-out, disgruntled, over-worked employees mixed with with all the pain in the world. Kids with axes stuck in their heads and death and bodily fluids! Then, add about a million years of red tape and insurance forms written by teams or lawyers and you have a…. Party!

    I know it could be so much worse and it is in other countries but it is just maddening how things go down there. If only there was a better way. I know this whole subject is political and I really have no business getting on my soap box about anything to do with anything regarding politics. But there has to be a better way to run things. And our hospital is supposed to be one of the best hospitals!

    We really didn’t need to go to the ER but there was that small chance that Baby Bug had fractured one of her hand bones (is that the proper way to say that?) and we didn’t want it to swell and cause us worse problems later in the night when the Emergency Room is even more crazy. She was crying more than usual and looking down at her puffy purple hand like it was really causing her some pain. It didn’t help that I didn’t realize it was her hand that was hurt and I went and lifted her by her hands to get her over the baby gate. Smooth move, mom. I felt horrible. My poor baby!

    Four hours after we arrived at the ER, we decided that we really didn’t need to be there. Baby Bug was fine. She was putting weight on her hand all the time and wiggling all around like a little worm. She wanted me to walk her around the busy waiting room (holding her by her hands). She wanted to eat snacks (with her sore hand) from my secret stash in my purse. She wanted to make friends with all the other patients (and wave with her sore hand). She wanted to throw her pacifier down on the dirty floor (with her sore hand) and make me go rinse it off in the bathroom over and over and over again. She was FINE.

    There were so many other people who were not fine. One guy was lying on the floor groaning in a pool of his own vomit, reminding me so much of myself when I visited the ER with my gallbladder illness. There was a three year old with a bloody eyeball being held by his dad who’s striped blue shirt was covered in blood. It was all so horrible and there we were with a perfectly healthy happy wiggly baby. It just seemed wrong. We didn’t belong there. We were wasting their time and ours.

    But it got wrong-er.

    I decided that we needed to leave and we needed them to rip up our paperwork so they wouldn’t have to bill our insurance and cause us a whole bunch of red tape headache. I approached the triage cubicle as politely as I could. I finally got a nurse’s attention and told her my intent. She understood but she told me I should wait because there were only three people waiting in front of us. “Just wait a moment,” she said. Something I heard a lot of. She would check on the list and see how much longer it would be. She could squeeze us in, and we really should stay, she implored. An hour later, we were still waiting.

    I checked with her again. She rushed us back behind the swinging doors to talk to a discharge nurse who would “get us on our way”. Or so we thought. In reality, nobody was getting us anywhere. They checked Baby Bug’s chart and told us we really should stay because they could do an x-ray today and that would save us a whole lot of hassle. So we stayed.

    We holed up in a little chair between the swinging doors, the nurse’s station and the hallway. Several more minutes went by. Charts were checked and lost and found and checked again. Somebody said somebody was “putting the order in” and then somebody would “walk us over to radiology.” So we waited some more. And some more, and then some more after that. Then someone came and took Baby Bug’s insurance card and had me sign a form that said I would pay through the nose if my insurance company decided not to pay. Then we waited some more while Baby Bug’s insurance card was off in some distant land being copied.

    By now Baby Bug was two hours past her usual afternoon nap time and she was getting mighty cranky. Nothing the nurses and doctor’s couldn’t ignore, of course, since they are used to hearing much worse things day in and day out. But I really was starting to lose my cool. I just wanted to leave. Why couldn’t I leave? I really just want to get out of their hair. I know there are more pressing patients that need care. Just let me go.

    Finally, I walked down the hallway and asked the nearest nurse to please direct me to the copy machine so I could retrieve my daughter’s insurance card and LEAVE. X-ray, schmex-ray. We could deal with this so much easier tomorrow with our regular doctor. We could probably walk over to radiology by ourselves and deal with it so much better but I realize they have procedures that need to be followed. I really don’t want to be the bad customer who rants and raves. I just want to cut my losses and get out.

    Of course my words weren’t as eloquent as they should have been, Baby Bug was crying and my blood pressure was elevated. Things were said that should not have been said. It was another showdown in the halls of the hospital. The nurse had to raise her voice with me and explain that it would only be “a moment longer”. But I was done with “moments” by then. My baby needed to be home. There were other babies who needed their “moments” worse than my baby did.

    Finally, we got the insurance card and Toby and I and Baby Bug stormed out the swinging exit doors. It’s just so maddening because what was accomplished here? Will they feel bad that the inefficiency of the system pissed off another customer and they lost a thousand bucks because we just couldn’t wait “a moment longer”? No. This probably happens every day. They’ll probably just write me off as another high strung mother who doesn’t understand how things work. I’m the one leaving with anger. Why? Of course I have the luxury of ranting about it on the internet but still. Nothing was accomplished. It was a waste of time.

    What really is depressing to me is that I know I will have to go back. Baby Bug will probably get hurt again. It’s part of being a kid. I know I should be thankful that we even have an emergency room to go to. I know there are countries out there that don’t but I just am NOT ready to go through that again. Thankfully, this time we did it without Baby Bug being in major pain. I can’t even imagine the horror it would be if she were. I guess I’m just going to be a lot more careful about big stools that can be pulled over.

    Edited to add by Toby: The most frustrating thing for us was that we didn’t want any special treatment. I understand why they are understaffed—half their money goes to paying for people who don’t have insurance or citizenship. We didn’t want to bother them at all. We thought it would it best for them if they would just delegate us somewhere else, like Radiology. But they are so handcuffed by all their stupid federal forms and purchase orders, that they couldn’t get rid of us to save themselves.

  • domesticity,  illos

    the amazing

    I won a contest the other day. A contest on Blogher put on by the wonderful people at Nutrabella who invented the Belly Bar—which are pretty tasty I might add. Tastier than Luna Bars. All I did was type in a little blurb about why I’m a “super mom” (ha ha) and they picked my entry and gave me $100 free cleaning service! Hot Dog! I’ve never had cleaning service before.

    I had no idea what to expect. I was meaning to blog about it so I could ask you guys what it would be like because I had all kinds of questions. Like, is it kosher to ask them to clean your microwave and under the sink where your trash can goes… with all the fly-away coffee grounds and that encrusted junk that leaked from a bottle of something toxic about a million years ago? Or do they charge extra for that? Are they going to look at me like I’m some kind of scummy pig? Am I supposed to make a list of things I want cleaned or do they have a standard routine like the cleaning ladies at hotels? But I never got around to blogging about it so I had to go it alone this morning.

    Boy, was I in for a surprise. Wowie Zowie. I got the royal treatment. Six cleaning ladies showed up at my door. SIX of them!!! They took my house by storm. All of a sudden my large living room felt very small as they hauled in their trays of mysterious cleaning sprays and rags and three vacuum cleaners. Only one spoke English and she directed the rest of them like an army general. When I asked her if she could clean my microwave and my scary trash can cupboard she shrugged as if it was nothing. Of course she could! Silly woman, we are here to clean.

    Just like that two girls started scrubbing my stove, all my cupboards and the sink and the floor. Two others attacked my vertical blinds and dusted every horizontal surface in my living room. The other two headed straight for my bathroom and all I heard from them for the next two hours was my water turning on and off and long paragraphs of staccato sentences in Spanish. I’m sure they were discussing how dirty Americans are.

    Toby was sleeping when the cleaning crew arrived but he quickly woke up from all the commotion. Good thing I had warned him they were coming the night before but I didn’t say anything about an army of six showing up. I was expecting two, maybe four. It’s quite another thing when your whole house gets taken over. Thankfully, Toby was quickly wowed by their whirlwind efficiency and he scooted out to our front porch to have a cup of coffee with Baby Bug and I. (No coffee for Baby Bug of course, she had Cheerios.) We all just sat there kind of dazed. Our house is usually pretty quiet and sleepy on a Saturday morning. Nothing like this ever happens.

    After about two hours of shooting the breeze on the patio, I was instructed to come inside and inspect their work. Oh. My. Goodness. I have never ever EVER seen my house SO clean before. I bet even when it was first built, way back in the fifties, it wasn’t this clean. I’ve probably told you that Sugar Ray used to live here before us (when they were just a bunch of punks smokin’ weed) and they royally trashed the place before we moved in. I thought the dinginess was permanent. Sure, I’ve scrubbed it up a lot but not anything like what it went through today. I think the whole place is a different color. Scary. I’m starting to really have an inferiority complex as a housewife. My sink alone is a work of art in white porcelain. The shower! The tile is smooth and squeaky! There is no residue at all! The tub that has no finish left on it and is usually smudged with permanent black stains, is white. White as bleach. And it smells like it too. We had to leave the windows open for a few hours because they used some pretty strong stuff in there.

    Whatever it is they did, I could get used to this. The Director/Captain cleaning woman told me that next time they come they will get things much cleaner. It was almost as if she was apologizing that things weren’t clean enough. She has no idea how blown away I am. I had really given up hope on my bathroom. Too bad I didn’t have this done before the Pinkkkkkity First Birthday party.

    Even so, it’s really nice. I can now say that the entire house, except for Toby’s office, is completely baby proof. With our fancy new cat box, Baby Bug can now crawl/toddle from room to room without me having to worry about anything. There are no longer any scary corners (ie: behind the toilet) with grunge and scum that I have to chase her away from.

    Sigh. It is a beautiful thing.

    But it gets better! Toby was soooo impressed that he said I could hire the cleaning brigade to come four times a year. Can you believe it? This from the guy who thinks I’m already spoiled rotten and living the life of luxury because I get to stay home and play with my kid all day long? I might as well go play at Tiffany’s with his charge card and get my nails done every day. I’m this close to becoming one of those Orange County housewives everybody makes fun of. But not really. Not yet.

    I can see why people do this weekly. I’m afraid to cook or use my sink because I might mar the beauty. Already, I cooked scrambled eggs and flopped a lumpy piece of half cooked egg onto my perfectly white stove. It was horrible. I almost burned my fingers trying to keep the vile piece of egg from contaminating the cleanliness. What am I going to do? I can’t cook anything with tomato sauce or oil. It will ruin the magic.

    I’d take pictures but they wouldn’t do it justice. You’ll just have to use your imagination.