Sorry it's been a while since I've written anything but it's been a little hectic around here lately. Asha decided that a stint in the US wouldn't be complete without a trip through the American medical system. So, she decided to go ahead and break her arm.
The long and short of it is that she fell off her bike right onto her elbow. By the time David and had carried her and her bike back to her house she was crying but not in that hysterical, shrieky way that severely injured kids cry. It was pretty swollen so we decided to take her to the hospital to get it checked out. After waiting a couple of hours and reading every single story in our Robert Munsch anthology we finally saw a doctor who very helpfully told us that she didn't see a fracture on the xray but elbow fractures are notoriously hard to see so we might want to see someone else but it might be fine but if we want we can go to an orthopaedic hospital just in case...if we want...maybe. I know that ER doctors are not specialists and can't be expected to know everything but how about giving us some good, solid information to help us out! I'm all over being an empowered patient but I expect a doctor to at least give some guidance when a decision needs to be made.
So Asha was in fairly good spirits at this point and we decided that a kid with a broken arm would be significantly more miserable. We decided to see if the swelling went down over the following couple of days and go to the orthopaedic hospital if things hadn't improved. The next day I got a call from a Dr. Dash (isn't that a fabulous name?!). He had reviewed the x-ray and suspected a fracture and suggested we get it checked out. So I dutifully packed Asha up and headed to the hospital that the doctor from the night before had mentioned in her useless rambling.
My heart sank as we entered the waiting room of the orthopaedic hospital. It was packed with families waiting to be seen by the doctor. I saw a long wait ahead of us. I also couldn't help but notice that 95% of the people there were Latino the majority of which didn't speak English. Don't white people break their bones sometimes? The only other white people there were the wierdest family I've ever seen. The son was in his early 20's and was showing off his transformer toy to his grandpa. I thought that maybe he was cognitively delayed or something but I'm pretty sure he was just really wierd. He kept yelling at his mom and telling her what to do while she played some game on her cell phone and loudly commented about it.
You know how they say there are stages of grief? Well for Asha there were a series of stages of meltdown. It began with indifference followed by excitement because there were TV's everywhere for her to watch! I must say, I don't have a whole lot of positive things to say about television but it sorta saved my life that day. I can only read Murmel Murmel Murmel so many times! The next stage of meltdown was anger when the masses of other kids in the waiting room wanted to share her toys. She lost her ever-loving mind whenever anyone went near her dress-up bears and I had to put them all away.
This was followed by a very very long stage of boredom. She was prepared to do cartwheels on her sore arm in order to get out of there. I was also starting to think that it was all a waste of time and we were going to wait all day to find out she was fine. But I was "pot committed" as they say in poker and I wasn't going to bail out at that point. We'd had lunch before we left and I'd only packed a few snacks since I thought we'd just be a couple of hours. The cafeteria closed at 3:00. What closes at 3:00 I ask you!! So we ate Cheetos for dinner.
7 1/2 hours later we finally saw the doctor. They took another series of x-rays and discovered that Asha's elbow was indeed fractured. They couldn't believe that the first doctor hadn't seen it. They told me that they would give Asha a shot of morphine and try to push the bone frament back into place and put it in a cast. I was told that the morphine might make her sleepy which sounded a-okay to me! I had visions of lovingly carrying my sleeping girl out to the truck, driving home, and putting her in bed where she belonged. Well the morphine seemed to make her not so much sleepy as unbearably grumpy and beligerent. She screamed for her dad (who wasn't there) the whole time they were putting on the cast. When the x-ray technician took one last set of x-rays Asha told him, and I quote, "get out of my life". When the doctor told us that the bone fragment looked like it was in place and surgery likely wouldn't be needed (a very real possibility up until that point) I said "thank you" and Asha scowled at him and said "no thank you". Oh dear. So the last stage of meltdown for Asha that night seemed to be beligerence. I think her little 4 year old brain was looking for someone to blame for all of this and she decided that he was a good scapegoat.
The next day we went back to the hospital to have the head doctor check everything out and luckily surgery will not be necessary. I don't want to find out what general anesthetic might to do Asha's disposition! We also got a call from the first hospital to make sure that we had followed up with a specialist. I would love to believe that they had Asha's well-being in mind but I'm pretty sure they had lawsuit alarm bells ringing all over the place.
I must say that overall Asha has been such a trooper through the whole process. Of course it is her right arm that is broken which is her dominant hand. She has just carried on with life and eats, writes, and plays with her left arm without any complaints. I still can't believe how tough she was for the entire day before she got a cast put on her arm. I think she has inherited a high pain tolerance from her dad and her Grandma. David once went home from the hospital despite severe abdominal pains only to return once his appendix had RUPTURED! My mom once told me that childbirth isn't so much painful as "a feeling of intense pressure".
Oh, and it turns out that Latino people aren't more frail than white people (or any other ethnicity for that matter). There are orthopaedic hospitals all over L.A. The doctor had not sent me to the one close by at UCLA but for some reason sent me downtown to the hospital that's in a predominantely Latino neighbourhood. I'm not sure if we would have had a shorter wait time at another hospital. Part of me wishes that we would have known but another part of me wonders if I should get a shorter wait just because I have fancy expensive Canadian travel health insurance. My day was kind of hellish but it wasn't as bad as the lady who had 4 hyper boys with her (and I'm pretty sure the oldest who was "injured" was faking... he had the fakest limp ever).
Well Asha is now sporting a flourescent pink cast from her armpit to her fingers. She wanted her cast to be "every colour except black" but they wouldn't let her have more than one colour. They said that no kid has ever asked for a rainbow cast before. That's the thing about my Asha. She can be rude sometimes. She can be grumpy every now and then. But boring she is not.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Go Trojans!
No, I did not have a bad parenting day and decide to publicly celebrate birth control (Trojans...condoms...get it?). No, today we went to our first ever college football game! It was one of the things on our list of things to do while we're in L.A. and as a USC student David thought he should support "his" team.
As you probably know, college football is kind of a big deal down here. There is a very fierce rivalry between USC and UCLA. When I auditioned for my choir the conductor, a UCLA alum asked what brought me to L.A.. When I told her that my husband was going to USC she said, very scathingly, "oh... the other school". I laughed but she wasn't kidding. I'm kind of surprised that I got into the choir! Well we weren't able to go to a USC vs. UCLA game but we thought a game against the Washington Huskies would suffice.
So to get in the spirit of things we went a bit early to check out the tailgate party which consisted of about a bazillion tents set up in the quad at the university. Pretty much every club, group, and organization had a tent set up. There was one for Latino USC students, USC parents, Jewish students, etc. Not to mention all the sororities and fraternities such as phi kappa sigma not to be confused with sigma kappa phi. It got me thinking about belonging and how we all want to feel as though we're a part of something. Apparently it isn't enough that they all go to the same school and cheer for the same team, they need to compartmentalize themselves even more. I'm thinking about started my own group for wives of USC students that like hummus.
So the tents were surrounded by people milling around and eating and drinking. Every tent seemed to have food but I was unsure if it was free for the taking. Can I take hummus from the Gay & Lesbian student tent if I'm not a lesbian nor a student? We saw a couple of guys shotguning cans of Coors light which made me comment "is there any point in shotguning light beer? Is it just like drinking normal beer at a normal pace?"
From the tents we headed over to the stadium. We were immediately struck by how seemingly sedate the crowd seemed to be. We found our seats and looked around. Then David noticed it. Nobody had beer! We were shocked! We had really been looking forward to eating some popcorn and drinking $10 watered down beer! Isn't that what football's all about? Suddenly I was wishing that I had shotguned a Coors light.
I'm not what you would call a football "fan". I understand the general rules. I get it that you have to get the ball across the field and you only have so many downs and you have to gain so many yards in a down and all that. My problem with football is that there so much downtime. There's about 5 minutes of set-up for a play that lasts 10 seconds that may or may not actually be exciting. I find my mind wandering when everyone's just standing around and then I miss the action. I don't know if it's my years of watching hockey (a game that actually has constant action) but I had a hard time staying focused. At one point David said "what these guys need are some skates! Then things would get interesting!". And what's with all the penalties? The whole point of the game is jumping on top of eachother but heaven forbid they should grab someone's facemask! For a game with so many stops and starts, I found all the penalties unbearable! I think the penalties in hockey are if nothing else more impressive sounding. Slashing! Roughing! Cross-checking!
But enough complaining about football! It turned out that USC were the far superior team. They made some really impressive plays and there were some very exciting moments. Of course, when a touchdown was scored the fairly calm crowd when wild! They have this thing they do that is hard to describe. It's sort of like a hail Hitler salute but with a peace sign (kind of contradictory, I know). The band would play a song and everyone would wave two fingers up and down to the beat. I felt a bit like I was in a cult or something but it was sort of fun. Another highlight was that whenever the Trojans got a touchdown their mascot came onto the field. Was their mascot some big freaky furry animal suit? No! Whenever they got a touchdown a white horse named Traveler would ride out with a man on its back wearing a full Roman warrior costume complete with metal breastplate and drawn sword.
The horse, if you can believe it was not my favourite part of the touchdown (or the 6 points scored for that matter). My favourite part was what I like to call the "stranger high 5". Everyone around us would jump up and start high 5-ing eachother like we were all best friends. It made me think again about that feeling of belonging. Yesterday I didn't give a crap about football, let alone this particular team but there I was today high 5-ing strangers like the happiest thing in the world had just happened. It was kinda nice.
So if you ever get a chance to see college ball I highly recommend it! I didn't even mention the marching band that had about 500 people in it. David kept talking about how dorky they were. I couldn't really disagree but I'm guessing it's not easy to walk around with a tuba on your shoulder playing a song, marching in time, and lining up with 499 other people to spell the word "Traveler".
Fight on! That's what people in the USC "family" say. You wouldn't get it. You're not part of the club.
As you probably know, college football is kind of a big deal down here. There is a very fierce rivalry between USC and UCLA. When I auditioned for my choir the conductor, a UCLA alum asked what brought me to L.A.. When I told her that my husband was going to USC she said, very scathingly, "oh... the other school". I laughed but she wasn't kidding. I'm kind of surprised that I got into the choir! Well we weren't able to go to a USC vs. UCLA game but we thought a game against the Washington Huskies would suffice.
So to get in the spirit of things we went a bit early to check out the tailgate party which consisted of about a bazillion tents set up in the quad at the university. Pretty much every club, group, and organization had a tent set up. There was one for Latino USC students, USC parents, Jewish students, etc. Not to mention all the sororities and fraternities such as phi kappa sigma not to be confused with sigma kappa phi. It got me thinking about belonging and how we all want to feel as though we're a part of something. Apparently it isn't enough that they all go to the same school and cheer for the same team, they need to compartmentalize themselves even more. I'm thinking about started my own group for wives of USC students that like hummus.
So the tents were surrounded by people milling around and eating and drinking. Every tent seemed to have food but I was unsure if it was free for the taking. Can I take hummus from the Gay & Lesbian student tent if I'm not a lesbian nor a student? We saw a couple of guys shotguning cans of Coors light which made me comment "is there any point in shotguning light beer? Is it just like drinking normal beer at a normal pace?"
From the tents we headed over to the stadium. We were immediately struck by how seemingly sedate the crowd seemed to be. We found our seats and looked around. Then David noticed it. Nobody had beer! We were shocked! We had really been looking forward to eating some popcorn and drinking $10 watered down beer! Isn't that what football's all about? Suddenly I was wishing that I had shotguned a Coors light.
I'm not what you would call a football "fan". I understand the general rules. I get it that you have to get the ball across the field and you only have so many downs and you have to gain so many yards in a down and all that. My problem with football is that there so much downtime. There's about 5 minutes of set-up for a play that lasts 10 seconds that may or may not actually be exciting. I find my mind wandering when everyone's just standing around and then I miss the action. I don't know if it's my years of watching hockey (a game that actually has constant action) but I had a hard time staying focused. At one point David said "what these guys need are some skates! Then things would get interesting!". And what's with all the penalties? The whole point of the game is jumping on top of eachother but heaven forbid they should grab someone's facemask! For a game with so many stops and starts, I found all the penalties unbearable! I think the penalties in hockey are if nothing else more impressive sounding. Slashing! Roughing! Cross-checking!
But enough complaining about football! It turned out that USC were the far superior team. They made some really impressive plays and there were some very exciting moments. Of course, when a touchdown was scored the fairly calm crowd when wild! They have this thing they do that is hard to describe. It's sort of like a hail Hitler salute but with a peace sign (kind of contradictory, I know). The band would play a song and everyone would wave two fingers up and down to the beat. I felt a bit like I was in a cult or something but it was sort of fun. Another highlight was that whenever the Trojans got a touchdown their mascot came onto the field. Was their mascot some big freaky furry animal suit? No! Whenever they got a touchdown a white horse named Traveler would ride out with a man on its back wearing a full Roman warrior costume complete with metal breastplate and drawn sword.
The horse, if you can believe it was not my favourite part of the touchdown (or the 6 points scored for that matter). My favourite part was what I like to call the "stranger high 5". Everyone around us would jump up and start high 5-ing eachother like we were all best friends. It made me think again about that feeling of belonging. Yesterday I didn't give a crap about football, let alone this particular team but there I was today high 5-ing strangers like the happiest thing in the world had just happened. It was kinda nice.
So if you ever get a chance to see college ball I highly recommend it! I didn't even mention the marching band that had about 500 people in it. David kept talking about how dorky they were. I couldn't really disagree but I'm guessing it's not easy to walk around with a tuba on your shoulder playing a song, marching in time, and lining up with 499 other people to spell the word "Traveler".
Fight on! That's what people in the USC "family" say. You wouldn't get it. You're not part of the club.
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