Last night I went to one of my least favorite places in the universe: The Emergency Room. I came home from work, realized that I was in excruciating pain in my right knee and headed straight for the couch.
My son was running around destroying things but alas, I was too tired to stop him.
The phone rang while I was lying catatonic on my couch. It was my mom.
“My knee hurts,” I complained. “I don’t know what I did to it.”
“Take a warm bath,” the good Jewish mother advised.
“My bath tub is disgusting.” I replied.
“Then put a cold pack on it and rest.” She said with an enormous sigh.
“Okay…” I said, planning to do none of those things.
Within two minutes the door to my apartment opened and my mother was magically there. I should have realized, you cannot placate a Jewish mother.
She arrived with a package of frozen Edamame.
That’s just how crazy she is, it wasn’t even something normal like frozen brocolli. It was frozen soy beans. Anyway, she appeared holding frozen Edamame and insisted on putting it directly on my knee to help with the pain and swelling.
She also forced two large pillows under my legs. Thank G-d for her.
“Thank G-d for you mom,” I said.
“Well,” She began “I knew you weren’t going to do it yourself!”
The phone rang again. It was my best friend Mint.
I call her “Dr. Mint” because she is a wealth of information on a variety of health topics. She also knows about 401ks. We went over my symptoms and she reminded me that my pain could be associated with the fact that my friend the Nuva Ring and I had parted ways recently. I was having tingling sensations in my legs and was told by my doc to stop the Nuva Ring. Then all of a sudden I had this stabbing pain in my knee.
Dr. Mint told me that she didn’t want to freak me out, but it could be a blood clot I was dealing with. To make sure, I might want to call the 24-hour nurse hotline associated with my insurance. Well, despite her efforts, I freaked out at the mere mention of the words “blood clot” and called the number!
I spoke to a very nice nurse who had a crazy name that started with “Q.” She didn’t think it was a clot, but told me to see a doctor first thing in the AM.
Despite nurse Q’s advice, I was still uneasy. So I called my doctor’s emergency cell number. He told me to go to the ER immediately to make sure it wasn’t a blood clot.
After several minutes of my boyfriend bitching and complaining about going to the ER for “nothing,” he agreed to take me and we called my parents to babysit for our roving destroying toddler.
We spent over 10 hours in the ER with a bunch of nasty ill-tempered residents. There was one point where I asked this particular doctor (a one Dr. K.) if I could speak to her for a moment.
“What?!” She replied “I’m really busy. What is it?” And stared at me like I had five heads and a giant wart on my nose.
After this marathon stint at the ER, the fabulously talented hospital staff determined that I did not have blot clot, but most likely tore my ACL. They sent me home like this:
How am I supposed to take care of my kid with a cane and a leg brace the size of Texas?
This morning, my parents graciously offered to take him on a grandparents play date in Manhattan. He is going to see his friend Nelson!
Off they went to Manhattan! Now maybe I can get a little rest.