ATrip to the E.R.

As you can probably guess from the title of this post, we had a pretty exciting day. It all started when we went to the park with some friends at church. Brooke was playing with some girls and they found some rocks and were pretending they were earrings. For some reason she wanted to bring the "earrings" home. Ok fine. I gave her a baggy when we got home to put the rocks in. After lunch I decided to take a shower. Lauren was home and halfway through washing my hair I hear someone crying. Lauren is yelling through the door that Brooke put a rock in her ear. I quickly rinse my hair and get dressed and run to Brooke to look in her ear. I have Lauren call the pediatrician and they are at lunch. This was approximately 12:50. I decide to go on over there and see if they are there by the time I get there. I dialed their number again and find out they aren't back from lunch until 1:30. So I decide to go to prompt care. We get there and she tells me if they can get the rock out it will cost $265. Well we can't leave it there so let's try it. Fortunately we didn't have to wait too long, less than 5 minutes. The doctor tried a couple times to get it out with this long skinny tool that they use at the pediatrician to get ear wax. But she couldn't get it and she didn't want to bust her ear drum. She tells me to go on the E.R. No bill? I say. She acted like she would try to waive my fee, we'll see about that. We arrive at the E.R. at about 1:45. They take Brooke's vitals and then she starts crying. I didn't know if she was in pain or scared. She was in pain but now she was scared. We met a nice nurse though that hooked her up with a ton of stickers, a sucker, and some bubbles. She also found a friend to play with that made the 2 hour wait in the waiting room go a little easier. By 4:00 we finally got a room. A physician's assistant came in and took a look in her ear, tried getting it out with one of those long skinny tools again with no luck. She came back with the doctor who decided we needed to numb it with lidocane (sp?). She had to have that in her ear for twenty minutes before they would come back. A little after 5:00 they came back in with a tech as well and used the tool again and we all held Brooke down. Finally it came out. All during this time Brooke had been crying off and on because mostly she was scared, she wanted to go home, etc. Not exactly how I wanted to spend my afternoon. Brooke is fine now but she does have a little bit of blood in her ear. Hopefully she had learned her lesson and won't put anything in her ear again.


The rock: The arm bracelet (Charlotte is wearing it)
All of her goodies
Brooke being silly after we got home