Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Priorities

There was some minor bloodshed in our house last night. As I worked to clear off our kitchen counter to make room for rolling out sugar cookie dough, I knocked the sugar canister into a wine glass and snapped the stem of the glass and proceeded to stab myself in the finger.
Not a life-threatening injury, to be sure. But there was a lot of blood that wouldn't stop. Brian finally convinced me that stitches were probably needed, but I realized that my options were limited at 7:45 p.m. Determined to avoid a trip to the ER for such a piddly wound, I raced off across town to the an urgent care clinic that was open until 8. Thanks to several inches of new snow on the ground and Indiana drivers terrified to drive in such conditions... I arrived there at 8:02 p.m. and found the clinic shut down for the night. Still determined to avoid the hospital — and $100 co-pay! — I loitered around the outside of the office until a doctor came out and asked if I could get an opinion on the finger. By then it finally stopped bleeding and while the doctor said it could probably use a stitch or two, she conceded that if it were her finger she wouldn't go to the ER either. SO, I drove back across town, picked up some butterfly enclosures and made Brian put my finger back together.
None of this struck me as too crazy until I thought about how I would have handled the same situation with Ellie. I joked (half-joked...) with Brian that there probably would have been an ambulance called, or at least a fast and dangerous drive out to the hospital! Well, I guess that's just the shift of priorities that comes with being a parent. Her safety and health is #1 in my book... all the same, I'll try to avoid stabbing myself from now on :)
-Dorothy

No comments:

Post a Comment