A tEARful and Traumatic Afternoon

Now that Elizabeth is almost 28 months old, I decided I better finally do her 24 month well-baby visit. It was supposed to be a 20 minute appointment. Until the Dr. was looking in her right ear and said, "So she has tubes in this ear." "Um, no," I said slightly confused and alarmed. "Oh, well then she must have a hole in her eardrum." Increasingly alarmed and confused. Then he said, "Actually, I think it's a bead." A little less alarmed, not nearly as confused (this is kind of behavior is very normal for my children.) Then after a long wait for him to finish with another patient, he started to try to get it out. There was much screaming, crying, wailing and flailing, that led to the use of this.

May you never have to experience your child being put into one of these and then poked and prodded at for the next hour (after already being poked and prodded at for an hour), with the ear checker thingie and "alligator forceps" crammed in her tiny little ear hole. All the while a Dr., nurse, and lady with an alligator purse red gingham diaper bag, were hovered over her and holding her down.

She tried everything she could think of to get out of there, "Me all done." "Out of my bed" (the papoos), "I want Daddy," "Ouchie," "Docor poking me," "Heson go Fick-a-Fay with me" (I had promised her Chick-Fil-A when we got the bead out), "I get out five minute?" "Mommy get the bead out," "Mommy lay down with me" (because that's how we originally started, with me on my back and her on her back on top of me - didn't work so well), "Mommy, get me out."

Silent prayers were flying.

So when the Dr. FINALLY got the thing out, we were all so relieved.

Until he checked her ear one more time and said, "Oh Gosh (edited), there's another one." I said, "You're joking." "No." "You are lying," "I wish I was, do you want to see it?" "No, I believe you." Sigh.

So, it's back in the torture device for the poor little girl. Accept, they gave us a little break, in which she fell asleep on my shoulder, so this time we're doing it to an even crankier, grumpier child. Screaming all of the above things and more, "I wanna go sleep on Mommy's shoulder." "Alweady got the bead out." This time, the forceps weren't working, so he tried super gluing a skinny wooden dowel to it and pulling it out. That didn't work either (surprise, surprise.) So he finally decided to go with the nurses original suggestion (that I had expressed being most in favor of because it was the least intrusive) of irrigating it. So we unstrapped her, covered her and me in plastic, the nurse pumped some water into her ear and out it came. Now, why the heck didn't we try that in the first place? (Well, he had not wanted to do that because if it didn't work then we couldn't do the super glue thing because it would be too wet to adhere. But really did anyone have that much hope in the super glue idea?) Next time, let's just listen to the womenfolk in the first place. The whole thing could have been so much faster and so much less traumatic.

Then, just to make sure she would never, ever want to go back to the Doctor, they gave her a Hepititis vaccine. And after 2 1/2 hours, we finally got to leave.

She was asleep in minutes. I spent the whole drive home thinking, "I can understand why people drink in situations like this, and why the nurse came back from one of the "breaks" smelling like cigarette smoke." Instead I came home, cut myself a large piece of chocolate cake and watched a little Oprah, while taking lots of deep breaths, and telling myslef we'd go to Chick-Fil-A as soon as she woke up (really that bribe was as much for me as it was her).

Harrison (who Mina was thankfully able to pick up from school and take to her house until the whole ordeal was over) was quite concerned about the whole thing. We talked about it for a little while and then he went upstairs. It was awfully quiet and I started to wonder what was going on, so I went up to find him in bed with her. He said he wanted to take a nap with her. It really warmed my heart that he was worried about his little sissie and wanted to be near her.

She woke up pretty ornery and insistent on going to Fick-A-Fay (like I would have forgotten).

6 nuggets, a small fry, and several diet lemonades later, I was feeling much better, and so was she.

Until several children frantically came out of the play place telling me my daughter was stuck at the top and they couldn't get her to come down. I tried my darnedest to coax her down, the kids tried to help her down, Harrison tried to get her to come down the slide. But she was having none of it. Seriously, how much trauma can one 2 year old handle in a day? So, I climbed on up in there and rescued her. Let me tell you, those things are not made for people of my height, weight, or lack of flexibility. And it totally smelled like pee.

So, that was our crazy day. I told my mom, it made my top 5 list of traumatic experiences.

(wrecking my car and having the airbag explode in my face, childbirth #1, childbirth #2, Harrison's visit to the ER when he was 15 months old, Elizabeth's beads in the ear extraction)

The experience with Harrison was similar, in that they were trying to work on his head, he wouldn't hold still, he was screaming bloody murder, three of us were hovering and holding down, they tried lots of different things, it took forever, and I said lots of silent prayers. Different in that, he had a really high fever, so they were putting an IV in his head to give him antibiotics, we had no papoos (would have been really helpful), he wasn't old enough to verbalize any heartbreaking words, and the medical "professionals" were swearing under their breath. Oh, and that I had even worse skin than I do now.

Please tell me I won't have to go through an experience like this with every one of my children.

Actually, if this is the worst we have to deal with, bring it on.

Nothin' a little chocolate and Chick-Fil-A can't cure!