In light of my 2009 wrap-up post a few days ago, I can look back on today with just little bit of humor.
I wrote, in part…
We started off 2009 very different than it ended. At this time last year Maria had been in and out of the hospital more than once in her struggle to carry our 3rd son to full term. But the new year started with a bang. On January 6, we welcomed Paul Phillip Vigil into the world
Well, I think that Paul was feeling just a little bit nostalgic because 3 days shy of one year and he was back in the hospital… this morning.
It started out like any other morning (that is, I was asleep), and just before breakfast Paul decided to take a dive off the high chair onto our hardwood floor. He calmed down and ate breakfast but was still out of sorts. We ruled out a head injury (concussion of the like… uh, been there, done that) ’cause he wasn’t vomiting and all the body parts seemed to work just fine. He napped and when he awoke and still just wanted to be held we decided to go ahead and take him down to Children’s Hospital.
After winding our way through “the system” and a traumatizing (for Paul) trip to the x-ray room, I snapped a few pictures with my Palm Pre. Can you tell that sleep depravation and the Motrin were starting to kick in by the last photo?
UPDATE: I left out one important detail. Paul fractured his collar bone… I guess that little bit of information is kind of important to the story. 
4 Comments
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Ben,
I work at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and noticed your blog in my Google Alerts. I am so sorry you had to spend the third day of 2010 in one of our emergency departments and I am also sorry this happened so close to your son’s birthday.
I noticed your comment that his trip to the x-ray was a traumatic experience. I would like to hear more about your visit with us as we are always trying to improve our patient experiences. We try our best not to add to the emotional roller coaster that a sick or injured child is experiencing, so if there is something we can do to improve our services, we would like to know about it. Though it is never a desired place to be, I do hope your overall experience with our services was a positive one.
If you are open to sharing more about your trip to our hospital, please feel free to email me or call me at ***-***-****.
I hope that your son Paul is on a good road of recovery and enjoys his upcoming birthday!
Take care,
Steven
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WOW!
I normally don’t approve blog comments that are of a personal nature, but rather, just respond privately to them. But this one, even though it’s of a REALLY personal nature, I wanted to comment on how awesome CHOA is.
Like I do, Steven probably gets to work every morning and checks his email and reads a report from Google that lists everywhere CHOA was mentioned across the internet and social sphere. That’s his job. But the fact that CHOA considers this endeavor worth paying someone to make the extra effort to make sure the children they serve are well cared for says volumes about the organization. Here’s my answer…
Steven, while his trip to x-ray was indeed a traumatizing experience for Paul, it really had nothing to do with CHOA or the care you offered. He was tired and hungry by this time and once in x-ray Maria, his mom, asked if she could leave the room as a precaution (nothing more on that) — Paul was left in a rather dark room, necessarily immobilized, with two strangers and his dad. Unfortunately, he had to have his head turned away from me, because of the nature his injury, so he couldn’t see me or anyone for a few minutes. And he was scared. That they were able to get an x-ray at all was amazing to me. The entire staff of CHOA was, from start to finish, professional, courteous and most of all, loving towards Paul. We never waited more than 10 minutes and our doctor was in our room waiting when we were assigned a room. INCREDIBLE! We have two other major hospitals within 10 minutes of our home but made the 40 minute drive to Children’s Hospital and are happy that we did.
– Ben and Maria
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hmmm…I wonder why Maria wanted to “leave the room as a precaution”. I can’t imagine leaving my son in a scary situation like that unless it was for a very good reason, such as, perhaps, protecting the wellbeing of another child…in utero?!
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Maria, you just never know…