Vacation Part III: The finale

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . July 29, 2009 . 11:55AM

So, we finally got A.J. settled into the car and Livvy was working at keeping him calm. Overall, he was quite a brave little soldier. Every now and then he’d break the brave face and it reminded me how young he really is. He’s such a tall, big child that I forget he’s only 8. When I see him next to Lola, who is small and delicate, I remember that there is just a little one in that body who still needs his mama and who is a scared child.

I’d given him ibuprofen at on the pontoon boat. If there was anything I remembered from when he broke his femur, it was how terribly incompetent the medical staff were at that hospital and how long he had to wait for both water and pain medication. I immediately gave him both.

It took us 30 minutes to drive to the nearest hospital due to the excessive twists and turns and unfamiliarity with the wood-laden area. We’d already spent 30 minutes on the pontoon boat just getting back to land and A.J. had been in pain quite a while. I was on edge and ready to hurt someone. Anyone really. If someone had volunteered to be a Bobo doll, I’d have aggressed something fierce.

When we pulled up to the hospital, all of us did a double take. It was small and about the size of a large sit-down restaurant. I inwardly groaned and feared for the worst. There were no cars in the parking lot and I admit that my first thought was “Can they close the emergency room over the weekend in towns like this?” Look, I grew up in a small town, but this was ridiculously small. We dropped Leon and A.J. off at the doors and parked the car.

As we walked through the doors, the nurses immediately said “to the right.” How did they know who we were and whom we were with? Were they magical? Did they have mystical powers? The real answer is that they had TWO people in the E.R. One that had been there for hours and A.J. This further cemented, in my mind, that they didn’t know squat.

I don’t like being wrong, but I was.

Within 20 minutes, A.J.’s stats were finished and he’d been through X-ray. The doctor came in, checked him out and said that he had a foot sprain and that he’d be tender. We have a week of elevated feet and icing it once an hour to look forward to and then he should be good as new. Once he can put weight on it, he’s good to go.

Really? That’s it?

My first thought was that I wanted to go back and have a “chat” with the first responder who made A.J. hysterical. Then, I just felt lots of relief. We went back to the condo and spent the rest of the weekend relaxing in the cabin.

It wasn’t the best way to spend our time or money, but it sure wasn’t the worst. It could have been much, much worse. We were lucky.

We parted ways with our family and came home to 3 relieved dogs and one crabby cat.

Life is good.