That was a good one!

This blog is dedicated to children with special needs, their families, and anyone who has ever made a trip to the emergency room or accompanied anyone in the emergency room.  I am a special education teacher in the school for exceptional students that my 17 year old son, Chad, attends and am well known around campus as “Chad’s mom.”  Chad is a handsome young man who is part Hawaiian and has muscular dystrophy and shows up as a lovely shade of honey brown on the autism spectrum.  He uses a walker and wheelchair to get around, loves music, loves to “cut up”, loves to look up LDS conference talks on the computer and LOVES The Price is Right.

Chad recently fell with his walker while with his very excellent caregiver, who responded promptly by calling 911 and going with him in the ambulance to the ER.  She always thinks ahead to what may happen and packed up DVD’s, a photo album, snacks, pull-ups and basically everything but the kitchen sink.  She is SO GOOD!  Chad has a spiral fracture to his left not so funny humerus and has been in a lot of pain.  He was treated in the ER, his arm wrapped and given a sling, and we were sent home.  He is on Vicoden which helps a lot but everytime he is moved it hurts a lot.

We saw paramedics Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and were in the ER on Monday and Wednesday.  We had an appointment at the Orthopedic Center on Tuesday and while trying to help Chad transfer from his wheelchair to the car, he didn’t sit far enough in and slid from the seat to the garage floor, getting his broken arm hung up on the car door.  We called the paramedics to get him up and into the house and they checked him out.  Chad and I were both crying, taking turns sobbing openly.  I think Chad was irritated that I was crying because that was HIS job.  We just stayed home the rest of that day.

Wednesday I let him sleep til noon because it was the first sleep he had in over 24 hours.  Linda (my sister) came over and helped me get him cleaned up, fed and medicated, then on the sly called for the paramedics to take us back to the ER to see if further damage had been done on Tuesday.  Chad suspected something was up and kept saying, “No doctor.  No doctor.”  When the paramedics arrived I told him we were going to ride in the ambulance and take a trip to the hospital but that there would be NO SHOTS and NO IV.  The medication was really working because he hardly complained of any pain.

The ride in the ambulance was quite routine.  Chad asked everyone their names (Tom and David) and whether they watch Drew Carey on the Price is Right, if they are a Seventy, if they watch The Golden Girls, and requested they sing We Are the World and Swing Low Sweet Chariot.  I had to do my usual rendition of the Sesame Street Ernie Song and the Teletubbies Theme Song.  He made sure to tell Tom he loves him and thanked him a handfull of times, after instructing him on what to do and telling him everything he knows that could fit into such a short ride.

Linda met us at the hospital and stayed with us until we got an  ambulance ride home after seeing the ER doctor and having about one million and one xrays.  Our lovely ER “room” was a bed in hallway 2.  A little lady named Edith was in hallway 1, about 10 inches away from Chad‘s bed.  Poor dear, she is “a diabetic” and has a touch of dementia and came in because she was visiting her daughter whose air conditioning was too cold and she thought she had contracted pnuemonia.  Turns out the hallway was colder than her daughter’s house and her feet were freezing because of the diabetes and she was too hot on her chest and back.  I introduced myself and tried to help how I could.  I offered to rub her feet to get the circulation going and she agreed to let me try.  Her feet felt extremely warm to me but I massaged them anyway.  When I asked if it was helping she sweetly replied, “No, Dear.  Your hands are like ice.”  I told the people at the desk about the cold air on her so they moved her to hallway 3 which was located a good 3 feet behind us.  They kept her well supplied with warm blankets for her feet and let her change into a hospital gown because her blouse was wet with sweat.

Miss Edith was so sweet and so impressed with Chad and his difficulties.  She reminded me a lot of my late Grandma Olie because of her loud mumbling and her rather rhy (rye? rie? wry?) sense of humor.  Some of the staff were leaving at their shift’s end and a colleague called out, “Bye, have a good one!”  Miss Edith mumbled within ear shot, “I wish we WERE having a good one.”  I turned and said, “Ms. Edith, you are too FUNNY!”

I kept trying to get Chad to cough, because he gets a lot of mucus in his throat that he can’t handle well when he lies on his back for long periods of time.  When he gave a good cough Linda and I would say, “There, that was a good one!”  A few times he would give a series of weak coughs that didn’t clear anything.  Miss Edith commented, “That was not a very good one! Try that again.”  Besides having Chad cough and rubbing Ms. Edith’s feet I busied myself with entertaining Chad.  I brought my digital camera with us on this trip because on previous trips to the ER Chad kept asking for a televison set to watch “Vanna.”  I didn’t have any footage of Vanna or of Pat Sajac on the camera but I did have footage of Chad’s most recent school chorus concert which he loves to watch.  Since every movement hurt his injured arm I held the camera for him, close to his face and turned the volume where it wouldn’t disturb others.  A gentleman at the nurses station kept giving me dirty looks which I ignored.  Once he made a trip down the hallway and, looking straight ahead at no one in particular said, “No cell phone use allowed, Ma’am.”  I thought it was kind of funny that Linda, who is a former ICU nurse never got caught using her hidden cell phone, yet I got caught using my camera.

After a verrrrrry long time, an ER doctor finally came to visit us in Room Hallway 2.  Chad immediately asked the doctor, “Are you an Elder?”  I immediately said, “Chad, not everybody attends our Church.”  The doctor replied, “Yes, young man, I’m an elder, but not in your Church.”  Chad was satisfied.  After talking to us for awhile the doctor turned and saw Linda standing against the wall and said, “Well Hey!”  Linda seems to know EVERYBODY at the hospital even though she hasn’t worked there for several years now.  She then introduced the doctor to me and said, “He and his family are in my ward (LDS Church).”  He ordered some more xrays and sent us down the hall where Linda knew ANOTHER doctor.  I’m so glad she has a medical network.  We get such good attention that way!  She introduced me to the xray doctor saying, “He’s in my ward, too.” Now in Tallahassee it is VERY unusual to run into one LDS doctor, much less two in one visit!  After several series of xrays, we returned once more to Room Hallway 2.

Eventually Miss Edith decided there really was nothing wrong with her (after we had all been there for about 3 hours) and that she wanted to go home.  She pulled off the covers and inched slowly down to the bottom of the bed and when a nurse came over she told her there was nothing wrong with her and she was going home.  (I’m not sure what her plan was because her daughter had had to leave for a doctor’s appointment and had not yet returned.)They said she could go home but only after her release papers were issued.  A couple more hours went by and Miss Edith’s daughter came to get her and sat with her in hallway 3 waiting for those release papers (In the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave, you know.)

Anyway we had arrived at the ER around 1:30pm and left in the ambulance shortly before 7:00 pm.  We said goodbye to Ms. Edith, still waiting for her release papers, and hoped to meet again under more pleasant circumstances.  We had another routine ride (this time home) in the ambulance with Chuck, Chuck, and Cindy.

Here’s hoping your next visit to the ER is every bit as bodacious as ours was~!!

Smiles!~Chad’s mom and Chad (aka the bahama mama and her big kahuna)

FYI- a kahuna is a Hawaiian priest, NOT a be-hind.