Last Saturday evening we made a very exciting trip to our local hospital's emergency room. Henry took a little spill in his stroller and the aftermath was tear-filled and awfully bloody. His mouth received most of the impact with a brief detour down to his chin which got a bit scraped up. We had a hard enough time figuring out where he was bleeding from to be able to tell if he needed stitches that we decided to take him to the hospital so a doctor could check him out.
I had seen something on the news somewhere not that long ago that the average emergency room wait is four hours long, so I madly ran around the house trying to pack into a bag everything I could think of to keep him entertained. Anyone with a toddler knows this is a futile exercise, but I tried anyway. On the last trip up to Henry's room to grab some diapers, I spotted the frog he sleeps with every night, and although he hasn't shown any strong attachment to it in terms of it being a comfort, I grabbed it anyway and we jetted out the door.
Naturally we hit every red light on the way there.
There was hardly anyone in the waiting room and we were registered and talking to a nurse within five minutes. A few minutes after that, all three of us were squeezed onto a bed in a hospital room, trying to make each other feel better while waiting for a doctor. Since it was Saturday, Lawrence Welk was on our local PBS station, and wouldn't you know it was the only thing since the accident that had any calming effect on our kid. Lawrence Welk, with the bad renditions of Burt Bacharach songs and the hair and the costumes and the, ummm, yellow and the pale blue. And those late sixties early seventies orange and green. You know what I'm talking about. That's what quieted my kid down.
When the doctor came in, he felt around Henry's mouth, checked out his gums and teeth, cleaned him up a bit and said he looked pretty good. He didn't need stitches, his teeth were in good shape, and within a week or two he'd be perfectly fine. All of this attention to his sensitive mouth condition sent Henry into a crying jag that not even Lawrence Welk could penetrate. I tried to get him interested in some of the books and toys I had brought, but had no luck. Finally I asked him if he wanted his frog and he reached out, grabbed onto the frog, and clutched it to his chest until we were discharged and on our way home.
Sure enough, each day he's been progressively better. Saturday night was rough, but a little Tylenol and lots of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"'s made it go a bit better. And today he was back to his old self, teasing me with cheddar bunnies and tearing around the house.
Amen.