lemony tag 
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Yesterday was a cursed day. Three bad things happened. Firstly, I went to the chiropractor for my follow-up visit to view my x-rays and discuss options (and get my first adjustment). My x-rays look like an old woman's, very bent and out of alignment. My pelvis is crooked, which may explain my sciatica and why Stephen got stuck during birth. My neck is severely subluxated, which explains my frequent, debilitating migraines. Where my back should curve inward, it bows outward, and vice versa. So it's bad. I knew all of that but it was still shocking to see it. The doctor said he'd never seen it so bad in someone so young, and he'd never seen a neck as bad as mine. Ouch.
It's too late to fix everything. I should have been taken to a chiro years ago, even when I was a child. But the doc said he could fix most of it and that, with time, he could train my muscles to accept a new, correct bone structure and alignment. It would take six months and *drum-roll* three thousand, one hundred and eighty-five dollars.
$3,185.
Yup. At forty dollars a visit, plus rehab and a couple exams and x-rays, that's the price of getting a pain-free body. I'd be able to carry my son without pain. I'd be able to look over my shoulder (I can't do that now). My muscles wouldn't be so sore all the time. What a wondrous thing it would be to be able to stand up straight and not bow to the right.
But we obviously can't afford that. So it will have to wait. If we save $100 a month for two and a half years, we may be able to save enough for us to do this. But by then, the price will have gone up because of inflation, probably. And that means two more years of pain (I don't like taking drugs and never take anything stronger than baby aspirin). But I've dealt with it this far; I'll bear it a while longer. I only hope that the condition of my back doesn't deteriorate too much in that space of time and that it's still fixable in two years. I really want to be able to walk ten years from now. With my back continuing in the direction it's going, I could end up in a wheelchair in the not-too-distant future.
The doc did my first adjustment and it felt . . . weird. He only nudged my back a little, to start training it to be where it's supposed to be, but not to put too much strain on me. But it made me feel sore and out of whack all day. And the nausea! I felt sick to my stomach all day, which is normal but definitely not enjoyed!
So that was bad thing number one. Number two: I went to a birthday party of a son of one of the moms in a Meetup group of mine. The party was at Chuck E Cheese, where I'd never been before. I got there and ordered a way-too-expensive pizza and sat in the middle of everyone at a long table. A few people I had met before said hello. I met the birthday boy's father. And then the conversation stopped--towards me, that is. Everyone kept talking to one another, carrying on conversations about children, bedrooms, decoration of houses, and so on. I tried to join in a few of the conversations, but got ignored. It was horrible. I felt like the unwanted cousin that everyone hated--they just all ignored me. And I had so wanted a friend to talk to, to cheer me up after finding out we wouldn't be able to afford chiropractic care.
So as soon as I finished my pizza, we left. No one asked why we were packing up. No one stopped us and begged us to stay. No one even said goodbye. They watched us leave and didn't say a word. It was horrible. Later I got an email from one of the other moms, apologizing for what happened. That made me feel a little better, but it was still a terrible experience and added to my terrible day.
But my day got worse. At home, I had started a load of laundry at 5pm when I heard an aweful crash of glass breaking. I ran into the living room to find Stephen in a pool of blood. He had "walked" to a corner of the room and pulled a small folding table onto himself, breaking a drinking glass on his head. He's been pulling himself up on the couch and chairs lately, and "walking" along the length of the couch and from chair to chair. This time he pulled himself onto something that bit back.
I snatched him up, grabbed a towel to staunch the blood-flow, threw the dogs onto the porch so they wouldn't get cut too, and hit the door. I'm very thankful that we live so close to the hospital--it took about eight minutes to get there. I was hyperventilating in the car, swerving around on the highway, watching Stephen in the rearview mirror, screaming at him to stay awake. He fell asleep, but only because it was past his naptime. His head had stopped bleeding and he had stopped crying once we started driving. He may have been in a little bit of shock because he just stared lethargically out the window until his eyelids drooped closed. You know what's terrible? I was thinking, "Man, I should blog about how horrible this day has been" and thinking of post titles while I was driving! But it turned out for good--it helped me get my mind off Stephen so I could concentrate on driving safely.
We got to St. Francis Eastside's ER and I rushed in. And then we waited. Triage called us in and they weighed him, took his temperature, and told us to wait some more. Stephen woke up when I put him on the scale, so I had to entertain him in the waiting room. Matt arrived while we were waiting some more. (I had called him while driving to the ER). We waited.
Finally, around 6, we got led into the inner sanctum, out of the waiting room and into an examination room. We waited for another hour. It was close to shift change, apparently. I stood in the doorway of the exam room, cradling my poor son in my arms, still brushing glass shards from his hair (there was better light in the exam room than in the waiting room), staring at the doctor sitting at his desk, swiveling his chair back and forth while he drank from his water bottle, waiting out the clock. It was half an hour from shift change and the doctors and nurses were standing around, waiting, instead of seeing patients! It would have taken them five minutes to check Stephen, make sure there were no glass shards still under the skin, but they were too busy drinking water!!! I was angry. I raged at Matt at how horrible this country's healthcare system is. I became a Democrat.
If Matt hadn't have been there, I would have walked out and gone to another hospital or taken Stephen home and cleaned him up myself. I should have done that--it would have saved us a lot of money, I'm sure. We waited for two and half hours to get five minutes of care.
Finally, after shift change, the first nurse that came in; and she wasn't even very professional. She was looking at Stephen's temple, at the biggest cut, when another nurse came in and started asking about someone else who wouldn't be coming in to work that night. Our nurse turned to her and started talking about how that other person had left a book somewhere and would be coming in to get it and so forth. My son had a gash on his temple and when we finally got someone to look at it, the nurse was talking about her coworker about another coworker! We should have left right there.
The nurse gave us some gauze to hold on Stephen's ear, because it had started bleeding again. I'm afraid to see how much they will charge us for a two dollar package of gauze. Matt actually has some in his jump bag--we could have gone out to the car and gotten it! We ought to have refused it, though it probably wouldn't have done much good. We refused an ice pack for Stephen's temple (it had already been a couple hours since he fell, so I didn't think an ice pack would make much difference; besides I didn't want to pay for it). The nurse brought us an ice pack anyway. It sat on the counter for the rest of our wait.
Then we waited some more. A nurse practitioner finally came in to see Stephen and tell us what to watch him for. (We didn't even get to see a doctor! All that waiting only for a nurse!) Stephen was getting fussy because it was getting close to 8pm, way past his bedtime. So I started breastfeeding him. The nurse took a towel and covered me. I told her I didn't want a towel over my baby's head, thank you. I was polite and kind about it, but she insisted, saying it wasn't me she was worried about, it was the people outside (our door was closed, so I don't know what the heck she was talking about). I let the towel slide off my shoulder to the floor while she was talking. As she left, she pulled the curtain over the closed door, to protect any "innocent eyes" out in the ER--all those poor nurses and doctors had never been exposed to breasts before, I guess. Especially breasts being used for feeding a baby! I've never been so insulted.
Finally, after a lot of waiting (I ended up taking a nap on the bed, because the wait was so long--we even watched the Glen Beck show on CNN on the TV in our room), we got discharged at 8:06pm and we went home. Poor Stephen fell asleep in the car and I put him in the crib, bloody clothes and all. He slept for several hours, like I knew he would. When he woke up, we gave him a bath and got him all cleaned up. Then we all went to bed and said adios to my terrible, no good, very bad day.
Stephen is fine. He just has a nasty gash on his temple, with a bump to match, and another cut on his earlobe. He has a few scratches on his arms and cheeks, but they're hardly noticeable. He'll heal quickly. He's already back to his usual self--commando crawling all over the place (super fast, too!), couch walking, and pulling himself up onto everything. He's a great kid. Thanks to God for keeping him safe.
He didn't even need stitches. We decided to skip the bandaid, because he'd probably just rip it off. He has a habit of pulling his ears while he nurses, but it doesn't seem to have caused his earlobe cut to start bleeding again. He's happily asleep in Daddy's arms now. The Sovereign Grace music we have playing has preformed its magic once again! Yay for naptime!
But you can have no doubt that I will be writing to St. Francis's board of directors about our horrible experience at the ER. People standing around, waiting out the clock, when we could have been in and out in under ten minutes! Honestly! I took names and wrote down everything that happened. I am going to refuse to pay for the ice pack because here in America, a patient has the right to refuse medical care or proceedures. It isn't my fault and I'm certainly not liable financialy if the nurse ignored my refusal. I'm going to stand up for myself and for my son. If that's the way it is here in America, I'm shocked more people haven't fought this sort of treatment. I'm going to make some noise. (Even if my husband rolls his eyes at me.)
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What a beautiful wedding photo... bless you both! 
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