@!$#%!#Y!@$^%, the aftermath

I ended up going to the emergency room last night, and boy, wasn't that a little slice of heaven. There were three major auto accidents that had come in just ahead of us, so they told me the wait would be two to three hours. I sent Susie and the kids home, as there was no reason for them to be kept up all night.
Have you ever had a lash in your eye that you couldn't get out immediately? You know how your eye squeezes shut so tightly, like a bear trap, that it makes the other eye want to stay shut? Imagine a dozen eyelashes. And wait three hours. The pain wasn't just in my eye, either. The squeezing of the eyelids caused a massive tension headache (or maybe a migraine, I don't know). All the tears from the eye watering ran down into my sinuses, causing massive post-nasal drip and a runny nose.

And then there was Charlie.

Charlie was a little boy, 6 years old. He was in his pajamas, and he was there with his mom and his nana. He was there when we arrived, I think, and was still waiting to be seen when I left. Don't worry about him, though. I think he had a raisin in his ear or something, from what I heard.

Charlie never stopped talking the entire time I was there. No, wait. That's not true. Sometimes he stopped talking long enough to make airplane noises. Or car noises. Now, I'll give him credit for this much: he didn't scream. He didn't cry. He wasn't ill-behaved. But he was ... verbal. And, being 6, he had no concept of a "hospital voice," or even, it seemed, an "inside voice."

So for three hours I got to hear all the details of Charlie's world. "Mummy, look, I'm bein' a aeroplane! Eeeeeerrroooowww!! Look at this, mummy, the door to the house is smaller than me! And I can open it! Why are we still sitting here? I need to go toilet... I need to POOP! Hehe.. I need to poop! Where are we going? The toilet? But I don't need to go! Yes I do! NO I don't! What's in there? Why can't we go in there? Is the doctor coming out? Where is he? Remember when I was bein' a aeroplane?"

And so on. In his best 6-year old "mummy and nana are talking to one another so I'd better speak very LOUDLY so I'm sure they hear me" voice. Not yelling, exactly. Just loud.

To be fair, his mom and grandma didn't ignore him. They did talk to him, and answer his questions, so he never got strident or angry. But he just needed to have the attention. It made for a truly magical evening.

Oh, and my eye? Scratched up pretty good. One big scratch, two small scratches, and a "road-rash" scrape right across the middle. But I went to my own opthalmologist this afternoon, and he said that as bad as it sounds (and felt!), the eye heals quickly, and I should be back up to 100% by Sunday. Monday at the latest. So I got that goin' for me. Which is nice.