ER drama

I like few things less that sitting in an emergency room on a Sunday, during a holiday weekend, in the Hamptons. Possibly, an emergency room at 1am on the night after a hurricane might be worse. But stitches that go in also need to come out and it all needs to be done in five days or the skin starts to grow over the stitches. EW!

So I'm sitting in a surprisingly busy ER reception area surrounded by the strangest group of people ever to share a room (ok, Barnum and Bailey's mess tent aside). On the one side we had a Hispanic crowd whose ailments included a full-blown case of poison ivy and a screaming toddler with a pinky finger sticking out at right-angles to her hand. On the other side, a couple of social skeletons, dressed in whale-print trousers and wearing white sun-hats inside (to shade their immobile faces from what, I don't know. Maybe the Hispanics?), waiting to hear news on a heart-attack victim.

There was a kid who had been beaned in the head with a baseball and passed out. And then there was a family of four who had their son's friend for the weekend and had discovered a bat on the light fixture in the kids' room while the kids were sleeping, and failing to remove said bat, had left it til morning in the room WITH THE CHILDREN! So they were there for hours waiting to start a preventative rabies treatment. I'm guessing there won't be a second playdate anytime soon ...

We were just there to get the stitches out of my son's eyelid. We waited half an hour to check in, another half hour to see a nurse, an hour for the plastic surgeon to be paged (dotted with insults that ANY doctor could take out the stitches no matter what the surgeon who put them in said!), only to be told that the plastic surgeon was in surgery and, no, they couldn't say for how long.

"OK, but can you ballpark it? Is he re-attaching an earlobe or is he performing a full-facial transplant?" (medical staff LOVE sarcasm btw). We were sent back to the waiting room.

Ten minutes later, they called us back in to the same room (although there are now fresh sheets on the bed) to say the doctor has finished the amputation and will see my son now. GULP. Amputation?! Dear God, I am sorry I was such a bitch.

The eyebrow looks perfect though.