Tuesday 30 March 2010

1st trip to A&E

And you will be amazed when I tell you it wasn't the result of The Kamikaze Kid.

Phoebe somehow slipped off her chair face forwards into the bathstone fire surround! She absolutely thumped her head open and had about a half and inch gash that absolutely poured blood, one look was enough to see that it needed more intervention than I could provide. Thankfully Clara was back in nappies so I got Phoebe to hold some cotton wool to her head whilst I got Clara's shoes on. I whipped both girls out to the car and we were on the road within 5 minutes of it happening.

As we were driving down to A&E Phoebe was, of course, very distressed so I told her I was taking her to see a doctor. She howled blue murder and declared she didn't want to see a doctor, she wanted to see a vet! Not wishing to argue with her I amended everything to be going to the vet. We were seen very quickly on arrival. One gentleman in the main waiting room admonished me for not calling an ambulance because they had the kit needed to sort her out. Honestly, it is any wonder that the ambulance service is so stretched if people call them just to sort out a cut forehead, if I hadn't been quite so worried I would have provided him with a well deserved tongue lashing!

Anyway, we had a small issue with triage in the children's A&E because Phoebe was very frightened of all the stuff. She wouldn't let the nurse take her temperature or put the sats monitor on because she was so scared and upset. I had my temp taken and my sats done and still nothing. Then I came up with a brainwave of how we would test the equipment out for Great Grandfer because he is having an operation soon and he would feel so much better if he knew that Phoebe had made sure nothing was scary first. Under this guise she consented and was pleasantly surprised that nothing hurt.

Then we saw the nurse practitioner who fixed her head. She had to make sure Phoebe wasn't concussed so, after checking with me that she had cried straight away and that she hadn't been sick etc, she asked Phoebe a few questions. We had who I was,What time of day it was etc. All answered within reason of a 4 yr old. Then the nurse asked what kind of building we were in and Phoebe answered "The Vets! like where Kit went". I then had to explain about the strop earlier and that to placate her I had said yes we were going to the vets. As an added extra bonus question the nurse asked about Kit's ouchie and Phoebe gave a very thorough description about the fox bite.

When it came to cleaning and gluing again Phoebe was not happy with this idea. So we told her how brave Kit was and also that if she was really brave we would go to the toy shop afterwards for a prize. I was amazed at how brave she was with the cleaning and steri strips.

Once all that was done we said thank you and then we headed to the toy shop for the prize. She has chosen a little fur real baby panda thing that squeaks. She also got a chocolate lollipop to counter any shock!

So 4 yrs 3 months into motherhood and we have our first A&E visit. As it has taken me all afternoon and evening to recover! I hope it is a long long time before we have to go again!

2 comments:

Kara said...

Poor Phoebe, and poor you. You have done amazingly well to get this far without visiting A&E though, well done!

Muddling Along said...

Poor Phoebe and poor you - hope you are both recovered