How many times have we said "please be careful, we are NOT going to A&E in a pandemic!" to our kids since we all got grounded? Well funnily enough kids don't care whether or not there's a pandemic, and they're sure as hell not going to be careful. They're going to entertain themselves the best they know how under the circumstances. Anyway, my two are no exception to that and here's how we ended up in A&E during a pandemic.
It was Sunday afternoon, George and Henry were playing, running round like absolute mad men and who can blame them? They can't burn off all that energy by staying indoors most of the day. It had been one of those days, Henry had emptied all the toy boxes out, I was tired, fed up and just in a generally shitty mood. You know when they're just into everything and nothing entertains them and you're just so burnt out? It was one of those days. I had just put Cheaper by the Dozen on (isn't Disney + just a godsend right now?) the kids didn't want to watch it and I had loads of house work to do but it could wait, I needed some easy watching. The boys were playing with the dog's lead and I let them, they weren't doing any harm and you've just got to pick your battles under these trying times. They had gone upstairs to play and I thought result, they've finally gone to scream somewhere else and I can watch telly in peace. Next thing I knew, I heard this almighty crash and I was thinking "for fucks sake, what have they broken now?!" and I was mad! So I flew up the stairs shouting, I lost my shit. They both ran into the bathroom crying and I told them to stay away from the glass they'd managed to shatter so I could clean it up. Next thing I knew, George was crying on the bathroom floor saying "I'm cut, I'm cut!" I went to check he was okay because out of the corner of my eye I had seen the blood but when I turned to him he was holding his foot and like pulled it apart. It was the biggest gash I think I've ever seen. You could see the fatty tissue in his foot, it was so grim. I'll save you the pain of seeing the picture I took of it but if you want to see, hmu on Twitter!
There was a lot of tears from both boys, Henry was worried George was going to die (ever the drama queen) and George was worried about the "important" glass (his words) he'd broken. I rang their dad and he came round to take Henry to his house so I could take the big man to A&E and I was dreading it because you don't know what to expect do you?
Anyway, we jumped in the car and headed to the hospital, foot all wrapped up as well as we could and headed to A&E. The one place I didn't want to go during a pandemic. We all know what A&E is like, overcrowded at the best of times (through no fault of the NHS - just through idiots attending when they don't really need to - hello use a pharmacy!) In our local hospital we have the A&E department where you check in, then you are sent to children's and when we checked in we were issued masks, all staff were wearing masks as well. Heading into the children's apartment there was one other person waiting to be seen and it honestly just goes to show how many people just go there when they don't need to. George was checked over by a nurse and adminstered some Calpol then sent for x ray to check there was no glass in the cut, after that he went to see a doctor, a boss man called Pete who looked after him. He cleaned the cut up then applied some anesthetic gel to numb him ready to be stitched and we were sent back to the waiting room for forty minutes while it got to work. All the chairs were cordoned off to maintain social distancing rules and honestly it was so well organised I can't praise the NHS enough.
Once the gel had done it's job we were taken back in to a room for the little fella to be stitched up and naturally George is quite an anxious child so he didn't want them to go near his foot with a needle for the local anesthetic jab as the gel hadn't worked too well - I know from experience the foot is a very delicate place to suffer trauma too so I wasn't really surprised. He ended up being given some laughing gas to relax him and it took three of us to hold him down as well as the gas to get the needle him. It was worth it though because otherwise it would have been another trip to Alder Hey (more on that another day) for him to be put to sleep and stitched.
Five stitches later and he's doing fine, we had to go back the next day to have his stitches checked for any sign of infection and we were seen straight away by the same doctor who stitched him up and we were in and out. I never expected to have to attend A&E during a pandemic and I honestly expected the worst but the NHS is amazing and our local hospital have been amazing.
Tell your kids to be careful yeah? And stay safe everyone.
Rachael xo
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