And for those of you playing along at home: Thanksgiving Vomit - 2 Amanda - O.
I still couldn't eat turkey, dressing, pumpkin flavored anything OR Cheesecake Factory cheesecake! I'm telling you - we should have gone with Dominos instead.
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| The kids in their matching Christmas PJs. This is my favorite Christmas tradition. Thanks, Aunt Sue! |
After eating dinner, we started opening presents and Drew coughed. He coughed again. And again. He couldn't stop. If coughing was an Olympic event, Drew would be wearing a gold medal around his neck!
He was struggling for air and having trouble swallowing, so we quickly left to take him to the closest facility - Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Urgent Care.
We'll just open these presents in the car. Thanks.By the time we got to the Urgent Care, I was in a panic! Drew was coughing every few seconds. And I'm not talking about a normal, sick cough. I'm talking a forcing-air-through-your-tiny-swollen-throat-so-that-you-can-live-to-see-another-day cough.
The receptionist said that the wait was about three hours.
Three hours? Uh... I'm sorry. Maybe you didn't hear me when I said THAT MY SON WAS HAVING TROUBLE BREATHING!
I told her that I wasn't asking to jump ahead in line. I was just asking that someone exam him and make sure that he could wait three hours. Seemed reasonable to me. Having patients die in the waiting room is probably bad for business.
So I gave her a chance to make it right, but she didn't. That's cool. It's her choice.
So then, in the calmest voice that I possess (the same one that serial killers use right before they chop up their victims into tiny pieces), I sternly looked into her eyes and I said,
Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I am going to stand in the middle of your waiting room and scream as loud as I can, "My son can't breathe! My son can't breathe! Somebody help me!" until you get us back there.
Uh...Okay. Well... then we will get someone to examine him right away.
Ahem. Thank you.
And then I cried. I hate confrontation.
After a quick exam, the doctor ordered a chest and throat x-ray. The x-ray technician said that she was nervous when she saw that Drew was only three-years-old, but HE DID GREAT. She said she'd never seen a better behaved toddler.
Now - I'm not saying that the low oxygen count had anything to do with it, but I will take that compliment and run - thank you very much.
His chest looked good but his throat was swollen. They pumped him full of steroids and and then we waited for a couple of hours to make sure that he was okay.
This was the worst part because now Drew was feeling well enough to be bored. I did everything I could think of to keep him busy. I even let him pick my nose once.
We had slipped into that Urgent Care Time Continuum where each minute lasts FOREEEEVERRRR. I looked to the left of me and saw Influenza. I looked to the right of me and saw Strep Throat. Awesome. I'll probably take home some nice Christmas gifts for the fam.
So at one point, we took photos with my iPhone to pass the time. See below: Drew giving the finger to the Urgent Care. That one's definitely not making the Hanna Andersson catalog this year.
And before you report me, NO, I did not teach him to do that. It was purely coincidental. But this affirms that thing down deep inside all of us that uncontrollably shoots a bird when we're pushed to the limit.
Besides, he's probably barely even seen me do that in traffic on I-75.
