Anna's Pink (Black) Eye

I was just saying to someone last week how amazing it was that in five years of parenthood, we have not made one trip to the ER. Well! Bite my tongue, because that's where we wound up yesterday evening. The doctor called in drops for Anna's pink eye and I figured, OK, this is an inconvenience (my entire calender for the week was erased) and a discomfort for Anna Banana but nothing we can't handle. By 4:15 I was calling the doctor's office and explaining to the nurse that I was feeling VERY uncomfortable. Anna had a fever and her eye was bruising underneath and swelling, and she was having bloody tears and mucous. So me saying that I was feeling very uncomfortable really meant that I was in a total state of inward panic and trying to act like a Mama who had it all under control. I really wanted to shriek THERE IS BLOOD COMING OUT OF MY CHILD'S EYE!!!! But instead I was all like, yes, I can hold, thank you. So the nurse spoke to the doctor and he said we needed to take her to the ER right away. Normally he is is so chill about everything, like Dave was doing an imitation of him last night, saying, Oh, that limb'll reattach itself in a couple of days, no need to worry.

So I called my Mom and she managed to beat us to the emergency room. She took Jonathan with her so he did not have to be exposed to the germs and the total Jerry Springer atmosphere (there was a belligerent patient waving a bedpan all over the place, cussing up a storm, trailing her hospital blanket behind her down the hall). The triage nurse who was checking us in had absolutely no reaction and just said in a very mild and bored tone, they're coming to arrest her. Like it was completely commonplace. I should have tranquilized myself before I went there. I absolutely avoid emergency room waiting rooms at all costs. Anna had to use the bathroom while we were there and I practically had her in tears because I was like, listen, Mama is just going to hold you, suspended in mid-air above this potty, and you are just going to pee in the general direction of it, ok?

I brought two hand spray sanitizers with me and an entire bag of alcohol wipes, and I was using them quite freely. I am sure the other people in the waiting room were like, whatever, neurotic freak lady, you're the one here with the kid with the green puss coming out of her grotesquely swollen eye, and you're worried about OUR germs?

Anyways, after MUCH trauma and grief (they don't have ear thermometers for kids (SERIOUSLY?), so poor Anna had to have her thermometer taken rectally. Although, I think she was far more put out with the ugly white bracelet they had her wear. It was so NOT princess.) we left the ER with a diagnosis of: pink eye. We were seen by a physician's assistant who I swear was younger than me. She put some dye in Anna's eye and looked at it with a UV light to see if she had any eye trauma. I was trying not to freak out because the bed sheet was dirty and none of us would sit on it, but she just came in and threw all of the equipment she would need to dye and examine Anna's eye on the bed (um, I know I was sort of in a hyper state of germ phobia, but I just don't think a dirty bed qualifies as a sterile field). And since Anna was screaming the entire time, I am pretty sure the PA did not even get a passing glance at her cornea since her eyes were shut. Unless the light was not only UV but X-ray. The dye and light did make her eye goo and crusties surrounding her closed eye a very electric green and that was kind of cool, but seriously, I really did not feel reassured at all. My mother-in-law was saying not to take her to the ER but to take her to the eye doctor, which may have sounded like a good idea, but how was I supposed to get her in to an eye doctor at 5:00 PM?

So we brought her back home, and I stayed in her room with the light on all night and woke up every half hour or so to make sure she was okay. I don't know, when I was putting her to bed last night, it was like her whole face was swollen, and it just seemed like bloody tears were something to be just a little concerned about. But her fever seems to be well under control and she is playing and eating and drinking Vitamin Water right now. Her eye does look better than it did yesterday. I had to call her Daddy to come home and help me with the eyedrops this morning, which was a little humiliating. I tried for 15 minutes by myself. We both wound up down on the kitchen floor, crying and sweating. She is very strong and fights like a cat. I could get her held down and held still using my entire body, but then there was no way I could pry her eyes open and squeeze the dropper. Somedays I think God should've given Mamas three or four arms. I did not resort to violence and restraint right away. First I used a soothing voice and tried to reason with her, told her she could stand up, just look up at the moon, and then when we were all done, she could pick out some candy from her Halloween bucket! But no, she was furious and adamantly against those drops. At least when she has fits about us brushing her teeth, she screams with her mouth wide open. When she has the same fit about us putting the drops in, she screams with her mouth wide open and her eyes shut tight.