When you have small kids, you always go through the phase of "baby-proofing" everything; electrical outlets are protected, gates at the tops of stairs, latches put on door of the cleaning cupboard. Then as time goes on, these things slowly start to be removed (I just took off the last of the baby gates a few weeks ago - the only one left is in the kitchen, for the dog!).
But a recent incident has made it clear that there's a new phase of house preparation I call "Boy Proofing", which is more based around the principle that you are not so much trying to prevent accidents caused by typical environmental hazards as accidents caused by boys digging around the house and finding stuff that you didn't even remember was there. To wit:
On Tuesday just before dinner, Campbell was making a boat out of a cardboard box, and was frustrated with the scissors he was trying to cut with. So he went "exploring" and found a box cutter in the desk on the third floor (office and TV room). And lo, it worked much better on the cardboard, and even better on his wrist as he slipped and slashed himself wide open.
Cue blood, screams and a call to 911.
As it happens, I was just leaving when Carol called to tell me the ambulance was there (6pm) so I pedaled home as fast as I could, dropped my bag at the door and got into the ambulance with a shaken and ashen but otherwise stable Campbell. (I went instead of Carol as she was starting the One of a Kind the next day and she needed the prep time).
We got to Sick Kids emerg at 6:30, and my heart sank as I saw the number of people there. Oy. I knew it would be a few hours at least. So we got signed in, and then sat in a couple of uncomfortable chairs for about 45 minutes until we saw a triage nurse to assess the damage. The view was that the laceration was too deep for "glue" so stitching would be required. Take a sit, we'll get back to you. How long? No way of knowing. None at all, sorry.
And thus began the marathon. Around 8pm I went out and grabbed some dinner for us, telling Campbell to listen in case they called his name. A woman sitting nearby chuckled bitterly and said, "I don't think you need to worry, we've been here six hours." Eek. Surely with a slashed wrist we'd be moved up?
No. Really, no. Over the next 3 hours we watched the waiting room empty out, with people who had arrived after us coming and going while we sat, bored and exhausted. Any attempt by me (trying not to be a typical psycho parent) to find out how the queuing worked was met with passive shrugs, usually telling me I should ask "The nurse" at which point they'd direct my attention to an empty desk. It was Kafka-esque, plus the fact that the whole emergency area is a dark, shoddy and cramped little area added to the 3rd world feel of the experience.
Finally, at around 11:30, after 5 hours, we were called to go to a examination room. Campbell was exhausted at this point, and luckily there was a bed for him to lie down on, and I managed to turn out the lights so he could doze a little bit. Around 45 minutes or so later, the doctor showed up, and things got really messy. Campbell was half asleep and really emotional, and basically freaked out when the doctor started trying to look at the wound and flex fingers etc. It was really tough trying to explain that there was no way for the doctor to fix him if he wouldn't help out by trying to move his fingers etc. He just kept saying "I want to go home!" which, in any other circumstance, I would have been with him on.
The doctor said he'd come back and he'd do some freezing to have a better look, and apply stitches. He also had the "brilliant" idea of giving Campbell some Tylenol for the pain, which I kicked myself for not having asked for sooner. The meds seemed to calm Campbell down, and he dozed for another half hour until around 1am when the doctor came back to apply the skin anesthetic so we could use a needle for proper freezing. I thought, "Okay, we'll be done soon now."
Sucker. It's not like the dentist where the topical freezing takes 5 minutes: no, in 2009 hospitals it takes 45 minutes! Which in hospital time means at least an hour. They came back around 2am and started looking into it, and although Campbell was still very upset, he let them get to work.
Around 2:30, the doctor (Oren, who was very nice), said he was calling a specialist down to look at this and confirm there was no tendon or nerve damage, as he couldn't assess it. Another 45 minutes, then that doctor (Helena, also really excellent) came and looked. Her assessment: sleep over and have exploratory surgery in the morning. At this point, Campbell was on the verge of another meltdown at the thought of not going home, but there's a dilemma: if he doesn't stay in the "emergency" stream then it could be months on a waiting list. Luckily, she made a call to the nurse on duty, and they agreed to let us go home and come back at 8am and they'd try and fit us in that morning. So, all that remained was discharge. Wouldn't be long I was assured. But at 4:20am -- 45 minutes later -- I'd had enough of waiting and basically stood at the nurses' station until they found the paperwork so we could go. Into a taxi, and home for 3 hours sleep before returning.
At 7:30am the phone rang: where was Campbell? We said we'd been told 8am, and they said, well we had an opening at 7. By the time we got there it was too late. The doctor apologized, "It's very unusual for that slot to come open!" At least this time we were given a room with a day bed (bizarrely no actual bed) and a TV and DVDs. And volunteers came by to make sure things were okay, even if they couldn't give us any news. After the hell of emergency, just having someone acknowledge that you existed was sheer luxury. Campbell was very nervous about the surgery, and they even had a woman who walked him through the whole thing with pictures and props etc.
Long story (not much) short: we waited until 6:30 pm before we got into surgery. Remember that Campbell had eaten at 8pm the night before? He'd had nothing since because you can't eat or drink 12 hours before. Fifty-five pound boy, 22 hours without food.
They said if there was no damage the surgery would be an hour, if there was then it would be... longer. So I got some dinner and waited. it turned out there was a tiny bit of the nerve damage, which they fixed up
and I went up to get
him in post-op around 9:30 or so. He was VERY groggy, and the nurses
were concerned he was not shaking off the anesthetic, but I explained
he'd had 3 hours sleep in two days and no food for 24 hours so was just plain wiped. Then wanted
him to stay over, but when I told Campbell if he didn't wake up he
wouldn't be able to go home tonight, he perked right up as best he
could. Frankly at this point I was so exhausted I couldn't think of anything worse than staying. The only bright side was a really beautiful nurse in the post-op who even ran after us when I left without his backpack.
I bought him some jello for the cab ride, which he barfed up as we arrived at home and then he went to bed and slept for 14 hours. He's recovering well now, although still has limited movement in his left hand. Me, I'm recovering more slowly.
If I had to sum up this whole experience, it's that Canadian healthcare is defined by a lot of great people stuck in a completely broken system. The emergency especially was traumatizing; like Air Canada, they haven't figured out that while people won't blame you for the wait, they WILL blame you for not acknowledging they exist. Why not give people numbers or times to come back if they know it's going to be 3 hours? Why not have more volunteers who can at least check in on people when the system shows they've been passed over for 5 hours? Even if you have no news, just the fact that patients don't feel like they're in an abyss goes a long way to making things more tolerable.
This is where I think the health system has failed. It's clearly been designed by process engineers or accountants or whomever. But like a website with every bell and whistle and technical functionality accounted for, it all means nothing if you haven't acknowledged the human experience.
And speaking of that, this human experience has taught us to start looking at the stuff in our house in a whole new way.
