ERring on the cautious side

The first thing I have to do is apologise to my son, who would prefer that I did not tell this story even though it doesn't reflect at all badly on him. But tell it I will, and I can only hope that one day when he's older he'll forgive me.

We spent a long part of last night in the Emergency Room at Albany Medical Center. We'd been to the YMCA swimming pool, and in the changing room our Boy fell off a bench, cracking his head on another bench on his way down. There was blood, quite a lot of it, and I rushed him along to the medical room where they dabbed the injury with gauze and held an ice-pack on it and I tried not to faint.

At that point we would probably just have gone home, if only one of the YMCA staff hadn't said at least eight times that it was up to us but we might want to consider taking him to the hospital for a second opinion, just to be on the safe side. Well, once an idea is put in your head...

Off we went, hoping that it wouldn't take too long. So much for that. As far as I could tell, there was only one doctor for the entire ER. Consequently we spent at least an hour and half sitting on a gurney in a rather dismal corridor waiting to be seen, while this over-stretched doctor whistled by occasionally on her way between patients in far greater need.

We finally got home just before 2am after not the very best night out we'd ever had. But thankfully all is well, and everyone has been just fine today (if a little sleepy).