Monday started out a lovely day.
I took the boys down to the Narrow Gauge Railroad and they played happily at the train table while I drank my Au Lait and knit Simon's scarf.
I called my husband just to tell him what a marvelous day we were having.
It was 3:30 when we decided to stop off at Whole Foods (I call it Half Foods because only about half of the foods are WHOLE). I had swiss chard and Simon in my cart. Now let's give you a little background here, so that you will see that this could happen to ANY mother.

A few weeks ago the boys and I were at Target with one of those gargantuan carts that has the build in seats in the front, Simon was sleeping (and can't walk yet) so he was in the cart continuing to dream. The boys were holding on to the sides of the cart with their feet on the under compartment thing-a-ma-bob, while I pushed us happily along. They pretended to be the man on the trash truck, hanging off the sides. If you're clever, you can figure out directly where this is going.

Back to the HALF FOODS story. The boys were running around a bit, not sticking with me, so I issued my warning; "if you don't stay with me and hold on to the side of the cart, then you are going in the cart." In retrospect, I guess this is precisely when my four year old decided to hold on to the cart trash truck man style. I'm was feeling the avocados for ripeness when I heard the crash! I turned around and Ruben was pinned down by the shopping cart, and Simon was wailing. I instinctively grabbed Simon, and pulled him toward me, trying to lift him up, but he is of course he was still strapped in.

That's when I yelled "HELP ME." Suddenly there were several customers around me, one wonderful woman named Diane watched my two big boys while I comforted Simon who was very hurt. He had an instant egg on his forehead and was terrified. Someone offered to call an ambulance, I said yes. Another man went to my car to get the pacifier for Simon. Soon the ambulance people were there.

Here is my moment to interject a story within a story. Have you ever had this happen to you? So there I am fully aware of what has happened, I have Simon in my arms and I'm staring at his pink pulsating egg, and what am I thinking?
I'm thinking that I want to keep shopping, I still want to grab some Meyer's geranium soap and the few things on my list. It must be a defense mechanism, the brains way of grappling and refusing to accept that one moment your family was fine, and the next you are headed for Maine Med.

Maine Med, ohhh the joys. I'm a patient person, but right about the two hour mark I was getting a little pissy. I had not even seen the triage nurse yet. My husband had taken the two big boys and gone to get some food and drive around until I called him with an update. The person that admitted us to the hospital, saw me and said, "You haven't been seen yet?" "Nope," I answered. She told me to go to the triage nurse and ask her if we had been overlooked. Now in the course of the 2.5 hours since the fall, Simon had been acting totally normal. I mean totally. He was crawling, laughing, playing with his dads shoelaces and so on. I was not worried.

I was not worried until the triage nurse. She had asked his name and tried to rouse him, but he had just eaten and was exhausted. Needless to say she did not get a response that she was satisfied with, and she grabbed my bags and said, "follow me." She directs us to a bed where she tells me to sit and hold Simon on my lap. The entire thing took 20 seconds tops, and once I had gotten us onto the bed I looked up, and there were twelve doctors in U shape formation around our bed. That's right about the moment I realized we were in Trama.

The first thing they wanted to do was see my little Simon cry. Well by this time I was worried so I began pinching him to wake him. They were getting a response they liked, he was bawling. To add insult to injury, they had to put an IV in. Well, my little Simon is not little at all, he's 26 pounds of pure love at 11 months. So they couldn't find a vein in any of the usual spots. They tried the arm, for a good solid minute while he lie there screaming. Then the nurse looked for a blue creek in his foot, nothing. She was kind of gazing at his head and she gave me this questioning look, to which I said, "Just do what you have to do." Yup the IV went in Simons bald head, opposite the big egg. He looked so banged up, but my boy was still smiling; well whenever they weren't poking at him.

The evening ended with a CAT SCAN. Of course I knew they would find that he was fine. So, I'm still kicking myself for letting them radiate him, but they assured me that the benefits outweighed the risks.

Six long hours later I was starving. It was 9:00 in the evening, we were all safely in the van headed home. I saw the golden arches on the horizon. Not exactly what I'd had in mind, but then again I didn't want swiss chard either.

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