Thursday, August 13, 2009

Massachusetts Medical Mishaps


This was the picture that caused me to drop my sandwich at the hospital yesterday. I think it was worth it. :) For those of you who don't know me well, I am never without my hand sanitizer, so for me to eat a sandwich off the floor...hmmm... Isn't she precious?


Weirdly, our family has had the most bizarre medical events in the state of Massachusetts. Last August, we came to visit Mass. to house-hunt and the first day here, I got an appendicitis--end of trip.

Last Friday, I came home from grocery shopping and the kids all started talking at once about Jordan getting badly hurt. It seems that Taylor was spinning the kids around and when it was Jordan's turn, Taylor tripped, fell, and Jordan's head hit the driveway.

It had just happened, and Jordan was lying on the couch with a bag of frozen chopped onions on his head. (Gross...he reeked.) The poor little guy had a huge egg on his forehead, which I knew was going to score him two black eyes in a few days. He also had some road rash up in his hairline. Taylor was beside himself, crying, and worrying that Jordan was going to die. Ryan said Jordan would be fine--he just needed to keep those onions on his head. Not being able to stand the stench, I requested that they replace the onions with peas...sheesh. Ryan was making cracks about how we should make a video for YouTube titled, "What happens when Taylor babysits." At the time, no one saw the humor in that.

It was after 5PM (of course) so trying to get him to a doctor was out of the question. We watched him closely and he showed no signs of anything serious.

By Sunday, sporting two black eyes, he looked like he had a mask on his face. I started calling him Zorro. Do you know how embarrassing it is to visit a new church, toting along a child who looks like that?

I didn't have much time to reflect on that, though, because Katie's fever started right after church.

So today, breathing a sigh of relief that I was home from the hospital and things should slow down, I got the kids up for breakfast. I took a look at Jordan's head and was alarmed to see that it looked more swollen than it had a few days ago. I called the doctor's office (the office that just accepted us yesterday, and had heard our sob story about Kate). They had an appointment for him for this afternoon.

The movers had shown up (gasp), so they were bringing things in and asking me questions about lots of things. And it was raining.

Kate needed to be taken to a hospital for some follow-up lab work.

"Calgon....take me awaaaaaayyyyyyy!"

I took Zorro to the doctor and they sent us for an x-ray. Thankfully, he did not have a skull fracture and the swelling should go down eventually. That's good because I don't think he would want to look like that guy on Star Trek with the humongous forehead.


Jeff came home from work to help with the movers and ended up taking Kate to get her lab work done. He said she was soooo brave and hardly cried this time. That kid is amazing!

I'm thankful to say that the kids were doing fine when I arrived home last night. I have heard a detailed play-by-play from Jillian and Molly about how the boys are the worst babysitters in the world. They made Jillian do all the work (no surprise there) and apparently a wedgie-fest occurred at some point. (Wedgie--pulling someone's underwear out of their shorts, resulting in sharp pain) The boys thought this was great fun...the girls...not so much.

"Welcome to Massachusetts," the doctors and nurses all said. Well, I can say that at least it has been memorable, and we've met some really nice people.