The last few days have
been a bit of a challenge… the type of challenge only a parent can fully
appreciate.
At the end of last
week, I agreed to look after a friend’s dog. I knew the kids would be thrilled, as they adore him. What I hadn’t anticipated, was the
chaos that was to follow…
After school I raced
the kids back home, so that they could have a good run around the park with the
dogs. And that’s when it
happened. The dog jumped up at the
eldest and caught him in the eye.
Like most mothers, I
am very tuned-in to my children, and as my eldest is prone to hysteria, his
reaction did not surprise me. Sobbing and yelling, I dragged him into the house
to have a look at his eye. It was
clearly very sore, but other than being a bit pink, I couldn’t see
anything.
He sobbed his way
through supper and as my nervous system was feeling close to breaking point, I
sent him to bed.
That night, I had a
‘not so little’ visitor. He
crawled into bed, intermittently crying because his eye hurt, and wriggling
like a sack of eels. Having been
tired to begin with, and despite my sympathy for him, I could feel myself
really losing patience.
The following morning,
I gave him the classic ‘play date’ ultimatum. The one where you explain that they can’t have their play
date if they don’t go to school…!
It works every
time. He went to school. But I started to worry that the eye
might need checking. Alas, our
optician was not around that day, and the lovely receptionist persuaded me that
I should take him to the eye hospital to get it checked.
Having off-loaded the
little one, I collected the big one and drove to the other side of the City to
the eye hospital. For reasons I
can’t quite fathom, the paediatric A&E department didn’t have a doctor. Luckily, after two hours hanging
around, a doctor from another department saw him. When I discovered that he had a bad scratch across his
cornea, I was rather relieved that the ‘gung ho’ mother in me had been
exorcised by the optician’s receptionist.
Antibiotics and an eye
patch later, we set off to collect the little one and managed, by some miracle,
to make it to the play date.
However, halfway
there, I had a phone call from the hospital asking me to return on Monday
morning for a review. They had
checked the big one’s Tetanus status, but were still concerned about infection.
Having spent four
hours on a Friday afternoon on the first visit, I was not looking forward to a
repeat performance.
Little did I know what
I had in store…
Having dropped the
little one at the school bus, I drove off across town to the eye hospital.
All the way there, my
eldest jibber jabbered next to me. He’s one of those inquisitive kids for whom “sorry, I don’t
know” is not an acceptable answer.
He will repeat a question in about three or four different ways to try
and get the response he wants. As
much as I love him, I do find this irritating at 7.30 in the morning.
With the thought of an
endless wait in A&E and heavy traffic to contend with, I could feel my stress
levels slowly rising.
In total, the wait in
A&E was three hours, despite having arrived half an hour before it
opened.
As my tolerance levels
drained away, I was subjected to: the child from hell bashing every noisy toy
he could find, whilst his parents looked on lovingly; a father, with a voice like a fog horn, who felt the need to
shout into his mobile phone; and having to watch the only doctor at the unit
having a good chat with a colleague, whilst we all sat waiting.
And then, the final straw. Noisy Irritating Child decided he
wanted a video. The Incredibles was in the machine. Great film and lovely distraction, I
thought. But Noisy Irritating Child
wasn’t happy with it. Oh, no! Noisy Irritating Bloody Child only
wanted Alvin and The Chipmonks!
As the hideous child
screamed and shrieked with excitement, my son took one look at me and grinned
from ear to ear.
“Why are you smiling,
I thought you hated Alvin and the
Chipmonks?” I enquired.
“I do. But I know how much more you hate it!” came his evil retort!
For the first time
that morning, as I threatened to rip my ears off and gouge my eyes out, to
spare myself the torture that is Alvin,
both my son and I really laughed.
Two minutes later, the
doctor finally saw us. My son was
banned for a week from all contact sports and swimming and told to go for a
check-up with the optician in a week’s time.
By the time we got
back to school, it was past lunch time, and the head teacher said he should
just go home, as there was a sports lesson for most of the afternoon.
My son, who was of
course feeling back to himself again, was ecstatic! I was drained and knackered – but nonetheless relieved that
I had taken the trouble to get his eye checked. It had been tiring and stressful and I managed to achieve
absolutely nothing else on those days…
But heck, when my son
dragged me onto his bed for a goodnight kiss and cuddle; said ‘thank you Mum’
for taking him to the hospital, letting him eat junk food and getting him a
whole day off school; and told me he loves me; that was the moment that made the
stress just disappear.
No comments:
Post a Comment