First trip to A&E

I’ve always been quite proud and not a little shocked that we’ve never had to rush Rosemary to the hospital for broken limbs, dangerous fevers or anything else worrying.

It’s not like she sits quietly at the table with her head in a book all the time. It’s not as though she assesses risks in the play park of the play ground and keeps to particularly sensible games and activities. No, she climbs everything she can, runs about, jumps all over the place and is constantly covered in bruises, scrapes and grazes. She might cry for a bit after a fall, but she’ll be more excited about the prospect of a plaster and will be up and about running again within a few moments. How we’ve avoided broken bones for five whole years, I really don’t know.

Today, Rosemary had her first gymnastics lesson. So she could go, her activity schedule has had to be turned upside down, with classes switching days and having to miss a couple of weeks of swimming while waiting for a new allocation on a different day. It’s a bit of a rush to get there, as it’s at 4pm and school finishes at 3.20pm. We made it fine, as she ran most of the way there. She went in and I went and sat outside (in the ridiculously hot sun) and had a nice little chat with a couple of mums from school (both there for different reasons).

She came out very happy, showed me some of the things she’d done and told me about some others and then went and got an ice cream. She skipped down the hill, put her ice cream stick in the bin and then promptly collapsed to the ground moaning and crying that her tummy hurt and she couldn’t walk. I’m afraid my immediate reaction was to think she was trying it on and just seeing if I’d give in and carry her home. So I insisted that she walk on. She begged to go and sit down, but I wouldn’t let her because there was a big swan looking angry. We crossed the road and then she collapsed to the ground again. This time, she lay on the floor, curled in a foetal position and I began to wonder if perhaps she wasn’t putting it on. I carried her up the hill a bit until we got to a wall, where I put her down and sat next to her.

I asked her a bunch of questions and what I got was that her tummy and chest hurt her and that it hurt her to breathe. It hurt all the time, but was a lot worse when she tried to walk. She then told me that she’d done a jump at gymnastics and landed where there wasn’t a mat, on her stomach and on a very hard ‘stone’ floor. At this point, after asking her to try walking again, unsuccessfully, I called Chris to see what he thought. He talked to me and to Rosemary and said that, yes, we should go to the hospital. So I called my aunt, who came along in the car with Rosemary’s cousin, in the car shortly after and drove us to the hospital. They stayed with us. At first Rosemary wasn’t very communicative, but in the end she enjoyed having her cousin with her and he cheered her up a fair bit.

We had a bit of a wait and then were seen by the triage nurse. By this point I thought Rosemary seemed a fair bit better, but she still seemed very pale. The triage nurse asked a lot of questions and it then came out that Rosemary’s tummy had been hurting since last night, on and off and that it just got worse when she did the jump in gymnastics. The nurse asked if Rosemary would be able to give her a urine sample, so I carried her to the loo and she managed fine. She then, after washing her hands, opened the door and ran out over to her cousin to tell him that she had to wee in a pot; then she ran off to tell the triage nurse. And then ran off to play in the playroom (excellent play room in Stroud A&E, by the way) with her cousin.

Her sudden change in temperament and pain level (though she still said it hurt when asked) worried me that she had, in fact, been putting it on. But then the triage nurse came back and said the urine had indicated an infection and that she was going to transfer us to the out of hours doctor for a check.By the time we got to see the doctor, Rosemary was totally full of beans. At first she was shy of the doctor, but after her tummy was prodded (eliciting a couple of very clear yelps of pain) she was running and jumping and climbing round the doctor’s office, with me telling her every thirty seconds or so to be quiet and sit still and not touch this and that, while at the same time listening to what the doctor was saying.

The symptoms were all fairly clearly resulting from the infection, apparently, with the bad pains being normal if it had been a while since she’d gone to the loo, while the sudden change coming from her going to the loo was also quite normal. It would probably clear up on its own in time, but it would be a good idea to have some antibiotics to help it along. And keep hydrated and go to the loo lots. When I asked if she would be OK to go to school, the doctor glanced at Rosemary trying to climb from a chair onto a shelf and said ‘If she’s in this state in the morning, then I think you can safely say she will be absolutely fine to send to school!’

We had to go to Tesco to get the prescription filled, so I got Rosemary a Krispy Kreme doughnut to have after dinner as a treat. We didn’t get home until almost 8pm and Rosemary and her cousin both have school tomorrow. I’m very glad my aunt was able to help us out by driving us to the hospital and chemist and waiting with us.

I’m very glad she’s OK and doesn’t have any broken bones and should be completely fine within a few days. And a teeny bit glad there was actually something wrong and that she wasn’t trying it on after all. And I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t make it another year or two before our first trip to A&E.