Well, that was no fun.

Does anybody else remember that old old episode of ER, back in the young Mark Green days, when the ER was super backed-up, and there was a kid with a severerly cut finger(?) whose mom kept asking "when are they going to see my son?!" and of course everyone in the ER was cranky and out of sorts, and by the time the kid finally did see the doctor, it was about 6 hours after the injury had occurred, so protocol wouldn't even allow Mark to suture it, so that entire wait had been a waste of time, and MG was so upset by this that he gathered his team and they triaged the waiting room armed with nothing but their stethoscopes and ballpoint pens?

I was so afraid this was going to be us Friday night.

Yes, my Big Girl suffered a fall in the bathroom and cut the back of her head, probably on the archaic door handles on the cabinets. This happened while mi esposo and I were at a church leaders' banquet in the basement of our church -- read, no cell phone reception! By the time I got the message(s) from my mother what had happened, it was nearly an hour after her fall, and we were on our way home anyway. She was doing fine by then, but Mom still had concerns that the cut needed to be looked at.

(So many things to kick ourselves over in the meantime: Why didn't I make Big put the stool back into the bathroom, or do it myself? Why did we think it was OK to take the car with the carseats and leave my mom with no safe way to get the kids to the hospital herself, should it be necessary? Why didn't I leave Mom with more emergency numbers? Why didn't I know that the church phone would ring downstairs if somebody called?)

At home, both parents looked at the cut, consulted the guidebook from the ped's office, and determined that it really did need professional attention. Decided that mom should come with me to answer questions. By the time we got in the car it was probably 9pm. (Hooray, that new road to the hospital sure came in handy!)

ER pretty busy. We waited a couple of hours to see the triage nurse. During this time, Big kept herself pretty entertained with the books I had on hand, the crayons and worksheets from the ER liaison, etc. But she dropped a crayon under the table and then BUMPED her head again coming up, which reopened the wound and got a bit more blood everywhere. Yeah, won't be telling the husband that little fact! After triage, we sat in a different waiting room, where there were a few other kids. They all had fun being goofy with each other, which helped pass the time. (A little baby next to us, same age as Busy but several pounds lighter, was sick with a nasty unbreathable cold; Big kept getting concerned and asking why the baby was crying. Kinda sweet.) Oh, and during this time, Big told the "real" story about her fall. Something about dancing around on the counter pretending an episode of Blue's Clues. Totally believable about her. I think I'll start sewing bubble wrap into her clothes and hats tomorrow.

Finally around 1am we got to an exam room, saw a doc, etc. I asked her if we were too late for treatment since it had now been almost 6 hours since the injury occurred, but she assured me we were OK. Verdict = needs 2-3 staples. Yeah, we could numb that, but (a) we'd have to shave the area, keep us there longer, and (b) would hurt just as much as the staples themselves. Knowing how much Big HATES having shots (she just suffered 4 booster shots earlier this month), decided to skip that step. The choice of a bad mom? Geese, I hope not. Had my doubts when Staple#2 wouldn't stay in and it took the doc 3 attempts; Big's face was a horrifying mix of pain and shock. The process leads me to realize that staples as a medical tool really skeeve me. Especially when applied to the skull of my precious girl. It just turns my stomach to look at them.

The anticlimax: Home by 1:30am. Put sleeping Big to bed, cursed when the inevitable commotion woke up Busy, sat with her a few minutes, then turned in myself. I was starving by this point, since I hadn't eaten my usual 2-3 desserts during the hospital time. And HEY, only six more hours until we had to be back at the church for a f*ucking "coaching conference" for church leaders. My buddies at the table only had to enforce my long-standing "don't wake me unless I'm actually snoring" rule once; thank God nobody turned out the lights!

Not much to report from Saturday morning. Got a small earful from GIH over whether we LIED to the hospital staff by stating that Big had no LOC, rather than the probably-more-truthful I-dunno. Fretted a while, wondering whether she would wake up OK. But she did, and that's about it. We go back in 7 days to have the stitches out.

ADDENDUM: Cursing myself again over the latest discovery, after I finally got Big into the bathtub and rinsed her hair. (The ER nurse told us to put her in the shower right away when we got home, but since it was so late and she was already sleeping, we bagged it. Another eyebrow raised by the GIH, but I don't really care. He'd been asleep since 9:30pm on this particular night, and has no right to criticize the choices of the sleep-deprived women who had been dealing with the matter for 6 hours.) Oh, but the discovery is that Big has a MASSIVE bump on the back of her head, a few inches away from the wound that was treated. So she slipped off the counter, cut her head on the cabinet handles, then landed on the tile floor. I'm nervous now. Keeping my eye on the bump and will probably call her doctor about it Monday. So far, nobody else in my family has noticed, and Big's not complaining about it herself, so maybe it's just nothing. A bump could be nothing, right? Right?