2 Days of Shopping and 1 ER Visit Later

It was that time of year again! Time for Megan and Matt's annual 2 day shopping trip extravaganza!

As Matt said this weekend, "I look forward to these two days all year!" Me too! We leave our kids behind and spend the night near some sort of shopping area. Usually we go to Syracuse to catch an Orangemen game, but this year, they didn't have a home game. Instead we headed to Rochester to one of our favorite malls.

But alas, it is never that easy to leave this house. In a twist of fate, as we were just about to bid our offspring adieu, I heard a thud and a shrieking cry from the dining room. Who could it be? But of course, our brave hero Brady. While running to show grandma our newly decorated tree, he slipped on his socks (he had just taken his slippers off against the advice of his momma) and bonked his head on either the hutch or the chair in the dining room.

Since his treatment days, Brady goes into instant duck and cover mode with any boo boo. When I got to him Grandma was holding him and he was holding his hands tightly over his forehead and left eye. As I carried him into the kitchen I knew that a few minutes of snuggling would get my boy back to normal.

That is, until I saw blood oozing from between his tightly clasped fingers.

When I finally convinced him to let me see it, I called for Grandma by saying, "Well, we have B-L-O-O-D!" She took a look at it, I got tears in my eyes knowing where we were headed, and she agreed that indeed this gash warranted a trip to the ER.

So off we went, Matt, Brady, and I. Brady can be melodramatic. Brady can be whiny. But my oh my, that kid can pull it together when it counts. This, I think, is his 3rd ER trip in the past year or so, and combined with his cancer days, he handles the hospital like a pro. We left for the ER at 10am and got home around 1:15pm...so things went slowly, very slowly once we got there.

I was praying that there would be no needles and thread involved in the fixing process. Thanks be to God that my prayers were answered. A very nice PA examined the wound and agreed that some of that super-cool glue stuff would do the trick. A few minutes later she reappeared with the glue and another nurse. The other nurse told me that I would have to let go of Brady who was laying with his head in my lap watching TV. She wanted me to hold his legs while she held down his arms so that the PA could apply the glue. I thought about this for about...3 seconds...and then politely asked if they could just do their job while I held Brady. I tried my best not to play the cancer card, but did say that given his sorted medical history that we try to minimize scary hospital situations as much as possible. I also told them that I was confident that Brady would not have to be restrained. After all, he is super duper brave! Remember the time he just laid there while they did a CT of his head after a fall?!?!

The nice PA agreed that we could do it my way. She said that she had read his history and understood my concerns. So I held Brady boy, who true to my word, didn't move a muscle and only whimpered momentarily once or twice.

He is now sporting a hockey-style eyebrow gash covered in crusty glue. I'm sure his preschool friends will be impressed. I'm just relieved that I already have their Christmas card pictures done. Phew...

In the end our shopping trip started off about 4 hours later than expected. I'm just thankful that we were home when all of this happened!

We shopped til we dropped, ate meals just the two of us, and laughed a few times about how this is what life was like "before kids." It was fun while it lasted, but coming home to our babies was even better.