We visited the ER so many times with Ammo that we worried we'd be charged with child abuse. I even wrote about it in the Book of Ammo's Life, that was supposed to be done when he graduated from high school, the way CW's was, but remains unfinished. He constantly reminds me of how neglected he is as a second child. Maybe I could finish it for college graduation....
I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents
~Elie Wiesel~
It’s a wonder we were never arrested for child abuse. Really. We spent so much time in the Emergency Room with Ammo that they had a cubicle reserved for him. We thought it was normal to have your name engraved on a waiting room chair, sort of like a Frequent Flyer advantage. We spent more time together at the hospital than we did at the dinner table. Didn’t every family have these quality bonding experiences in an ER Waiting Room? It wasn’t until a friend mentioned that they had never had to go to the hospital for anything that I began to think we were not the average family.
Perhaps this attraction to hospitals all began at Ammo’s birth, when he turned yellow and had to stay in a little glass cage under a light, like a plant, for several days. All this attention may have triggered some weird form of infant Munchausen Syndrome, and I, being a devoted mother who kept a copy of Dr. Spock in the diaper bag, ever-vigilant for problems, may have contributed to the disease. At four months, he managed his first, and perhaps most dramatic, visit to Doctor’s Hospital in Dallas at midnight where he was diagnosed with intussuception and rushed to Children’s Medical. It was the worst night of our parental lives, though had he been able to talk, I’m sure Ammo would have argued that his night was far worse than ours, and when was the last time WE had to have a barium enema and be propped up on a little post for x-rays?
You would think this experience would have cured his affection for people in white, but no-- when he was a year and a half, he managed to pull a casserole of baked cheese grits, just out of the oven, off the counter and onto his arm. With great presence of mind I threw him in the sink and ran cold water over his entire body, never mind that his arm was the only burn area; I wanted to be sure, in case burns spread like poison ivy. The ER doctor was most complimentary about my quick thinking. On that occasion, Ammo wore a castlike bandage for weeks, going in every few days for something called “debrasion” where the pediatrician pulled the dead skin off and rewrapped him. Ammo smiled sweetly throughout the ordeal, either because I bought him cookies after each visit or because the Munchausen was in full bloom already.
When he was three, we made a casual stop at the ER for head x-rays after he fell out of the grocery cart. In fairness, that may not have been his fault. When he stood up in the cart and said, “Look, Mommy, I’m surfing!” I panicked and stopped, forgetting my physics, not that I ever knew any, but there is something I am now informed is called The Law of Inertia- that an object in motion, particularly a small boy, remains in motion until stopped by an opposing force- as Ammo was. He flew right out of the cart and onto the floor, where he lay briefly motionless and silent, a large, somewhat bloody knot swelling rapidly on the back of his head. Images of Humpty Dumpty flashing through my mind, we rushed to the ER, which was just down the road anyway. This may have been when the nurses began calling Ammo by name. He was such a charming patient, always friendly and smiling.
The next few visits run together-- I remember x-rays for a suspected broken thumb, and stitches in his chin after he ran into a picnic table at school, when his teacher almost fainted looking at the gaping wound, and a broken arm- no, wait, that was CW. We all seemed to wind up at Doctors’ ER sooner or later. There was my own visit when I dropped a jug of chlorox cleanser in the shower and the contents flew up into my eyes. And Dan’s visit when he was chopping wood and missed the wood but made an excellent hit on his ankle.
Dan suffers from Anti-Munchausen Syndrome.
“I’m fine,” he said, mopping the blood from his ankle. ”Let’s eat.”
When I finally saw the gash, after dinner, I insisted on a trip to the ER. “We haven’t been in a while, they’re probably missing us,” I said. We all piled into the car, it was a lovely drive; it had started snowing and the roads were quiet and picturesque. It felt like a trip to grandmother’s house for a holiday. Everyone was happy to see us, and happy to meet another member of our family.
When Ammo was eleven, we moved. It took him only three days to find the Emergency Room in our new town. He was making his way to the ballpark for his first game with his new team and somehow managed to get hit right between the eyes with an errant baseball. When we got to him, he was lying on the ground, dazed, a giant knot growing on his forehead. He looked like a Klingon.
“I hope they don’t request the records from Doctors’,” I said to Dan as we looked for the hospital. “This is starting to look awfully suspicious.”
Eyebrows at our new ER home weren’t raised until the third visit. The second was for stitches after Ammo ran into a cymbal in band practice and sliced open his cheekbone. The third trip happened at another baseball game after he was run into by some large, mansize thug stealing home. I saw the whole thing. The kid viciously took out the catcher, who happened to be Ammo, and in the process broke several bones in Ammo’s hand. They had to hold me back to keep me from rushing onto the field and jumping on the thug. Dan wanted Ammo to keep playing, but his hand wouldn’t fit in the glove by the next inning.
“Weren’t you just here?” said the nurse, looking at Ammo’s smiling face. I began to sweat. This was it. It had been just a question of time before they noticed our recurring presence.
“Yup,” said Ammo proudly. “I spend a lot of time in Emergency Rooms.”
Maybe it was this obvious pride in his ER accomplishments, or maybe it was the baseball uniform, but we evaded an official investigation yet again.
Now that the boys are grown, there are no more ER visits.
I sort of miss that quality family time together.
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