TSK: Ooooh, SO close.

Urgent Care patient 1 (fever, headache, cough, exposed to Covid at home last week): “I know my body, and this isn’t Covid”

Test result: Positive

Urgent Care patient 2 (fever, headache, body aches, fatigue, home Covid test was positive this morning): “I just need a Covid test to say that I’m negative, so I can go back to work”

Test result: Positive

Behind the Medic: Was it something I said

Nurse: There’s a lady out front with her son, she thinks he swallowed a nickel.

Cranquis: Well THAT doesn’t make cents.

Colleagues:

2 HOURS LATER

Nurse: The patient in room 6 is just here for a stuffy nose.

Cranquis: Well THAT doesn’t make scents.

Colleagues:

Mirror, Mirror on the …floor?

I think being a boy mom is going to involve a loooot of future urgent care visits. My oldest son is almost 4 with the body of a 6 year old, the impulse control of an 18 month old, and the coordination of a newborn foal on ice (yes, concerned followers, we are in ALL the therapies). It’s a recipe for disaster, and I’m honestly surprised that he hasn’t had a concussion or fracture yet.

So Sunday I was in his bathroom and noticed there was no TP, so I asked him to go to my bathroom to get a few rolls. He doesn’t know how to walk—running is his only speed. So he took off in socks, slid across the hardwood floor, and went straight through a 40+ lb floor mirror. The clash of the mirror shattering was jarring, and the subsequent blood curdling scream had me frantically calling out to big J asking if he was okay. He was screaming that the glass broke and he was bleeding. I have warned him probably a thousand times about running in the house AND I’ve specifically pointed out the danger of the mirror and a glass-top table we have that he’s tried to climb on before, but he’s 3 and warnings are useless. Of course at that point I was just worried he was seriously injured.

I expected to see arterial spray when I met up with J, but thankfully there were just a few trickles. If y’all had seen the shape this mirror ended up in you’d be shocked that all he ended up with was 3 stitches in his hand and a little superglue on another cut. Not even shards in his feet! I cleaned up the wounds and wrapped up his hand with paper towels (I couldn’t get to my actual kit with gauze because it was on the other side of the razor sharp shards of mirror). I called a neighbor and dropped off little J so I wouldn’t have to wrangle both kids at urgent care on a Sunday afternoon and we went on. Amazingly there were hardly any kids there so we got in quickly and got the stitches done with only a few minutes of screaming.

One would think such a scary experience would make big J wary of running in the house, but it hasn’t deterred him one bit. I anticipate many visits to urgent care for casts, splints, and stitches in the years to come.