In The Now

Crap

When we left home on Saturday, to go to a potluck out of the city, there was a little anticipation that one of us would be in the middle of a medical situation.

None of us thought it would be Lily.

A game of some new-fangled version of Ring Around the Rosey, just as we were leaving the lake lot with the huge teepee, sent Lily soaring through the air and saw her execute a wonderful elbow-drop to the ground.  Unfortunately, unlike the heaving chest of a professional wrestler, the ground did not have much give, and Lily’s elbow went “ker-crack” (according to Lily), and she hurried over to me, in tears.

My dad-sense was tingling by then, and I had a feeling this was more than your usual need-for-comfort type of problem.  We hurried out of there, and by the time we were in the van, Lily was shivering and her teeth were chattering – this on a nice, warm day.  Dad-sense said “shock” and I covered her with my coat.

The DVD player in the van allowed her to forget her troubles and she fell asleep not too long after we left.

At this point, we still weren’t sure that her arm was broken and I had intended on dropping off Nick and Kim and taking Lily to the hospital.  But, as I said, she fell asleep.  We figured it would make more sense to let her sleep, if she could, and take her in the morning, when she wouldn’t be quite so cranky and, hopefully, there would be less crazies, and less people in the Emergency room in general.

We got her from the van to bed and she stayed asleep.  Until 1 in the morning, when the best-laid plan of this man went awry.  That’s right, I didn’t even think of her waking up in the middle of the night, screaming, and unable to get back to sleep.

I took her in to the hospital where we waited to be admitted, then we waited to see the doctor, then we waited for radiology, then we waited for the doctor again.  Three and a half hours, we were in the hospital, for a total of, what? 15 minutes of care?  Still, I understand, in these times of economic uncertainty, one must be patient, since businesses of all kinds are suffering and doing what they can to meet the needs of today’s consumers.

At last, she was fitted with a half-cast, given some Kailan stickers, and sent home with the promise of the hospital calling us in the future for a follow-up with a pediatrician.  I imagine Dr. Doug Ross or Dr. Luca Kovacs chasing me down a dark alley, screaming at me for what I allowed to happen to my kid, if I’m even telling the truth and didn’t just beat her for crying too much.

All of this leads me to wonder: How much guilt should a father feel about the events I’ve just described? I feel bad for Lily, for the prospect of a summer ruined. To be clear, I don’t think that this will ruin Lily’s summer. She’s three, and she has a lot of fun, even one-handed. But as a father, seeing my child soldier on through something like this somehow makes it harder to watch. All of that said, I don’t feel any guilt for what happened. She was playing a game, it got a little carried-away, and she got hurt. How many times has she played where it got carried away, with no repercussions other than, at worst, a scraped knee? I don’t feel that anything I did was wrong at the time, and if I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now, the only thing I would have done differently (assuming her elbow-break was unavoidable) is that I would have taken her straight to the hospital in Leduc.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Liam