Swingsets and Other Methods of Torture

I spent yesterday evening in the ER. I mean, it had been about a month since my last visit. Clearly, I was due. We walked in and the triage nurse looked at Jackson in the wheel chair and asked him, "So, what happened?"

He explained. "Well, I was climbing up on the swing set and I grabbed the rope that's hanging from our tree and I jumped off so I could swing from the rope, but my foot got caught in another rope that's attached to the climbing wall and when I jumped off my leg was tangled up and I fell.

The nurse looked at me, eyebrows raised. I kinda shrugged. "At least he didn't try to skateboard off the top this time." Another nurse standing nearby, stopped what he was doing and looked up, an expression of half-shock, half-awe on his face. The medical professional in him was thinking how dangerous such an endeavour would be. But the guy in him was thinking, Oh yeah, wicked cool!

We were led to a room where a nurse comes up and says, "Hey, weren't you guys in that room over there just last month?"

"Uh yeah," I said, feeling somehow guilty. I was wondering if this would be the time that DCFS came to take him away. "So, uh, shouldn't you notify DCFS about this? I mean, maybe they should take him away from me. You know, to make sure he doesn't break any more bones on my watch." At the nurse's blank stare, I quickly amended, "Kidding! Just kidding. I don't want him taken away. I mean, one day I'll probably be able to say that I'm the proud parent of a guy who stars on the show Jackass. And really, what more could a parent want.

So, the nurse assessed him, starting with his head and neck. When she felt the back of his neck, he said, "Ouch." Everyone went into freak-out mode at that point. They grabbed a collar for him, gently rolled him onto a board and ordered xrays of his neck and spine.

I objected at first. "Really, it's only his knee that hurts. He didn't hurt his neck."

They insisted that he could have a life-threatening spinal injury and after scaring Jackson with the details of what it would be like to live as a paraplegic, they whisked him off for xrays.

A bit later, the doctor came in and asked, "Hey, weren't you guys here just a couple weeks ago?"

"Uh yeah, in fact, I just paid the bill for his broken nose. Think I'll ever get the half of the bill his dad owes?" Everyone in the room fell to the floor, laughing over my totally hysterical joke.

After taking a look at the xrays, they determined that Jackson's neck was fine (surprise) and his knee was only sprained and bruised. They wrapped his knee and put him on crutches for the week. The doctor took two and a half hours explaining how to use crutches. Jackson piped up and informed him, "I already know how to use crutches. I was on crutches about two years ago when I got stitches on the bottom of my foot.

"Oh yeah," I said, "I'd forgotten about that one!"

The doctor, who had no sense of humor, was annoying, and said "okay" at least thirty-eight times during the evening, continued to explain the finer points of safe crutch usage.

An hour into his lecture, I stopped him and asked, "Um, instead of telling him how to walk up the stairs, could you tell him that crutches shouldn't be used as a weapon on his siblings? Oh and maybe also mention that it would probably be a bad idea to pole vault with them? Thanks!"

Sooo, any bets on what his next injury will be? Because you know there will be a next time. There's always a next time. And it generally involves a stupid plan gone awry.