There are so many ways I could title this entry…

All’s Well that Ends Well

How I spent almost four hours on a Tuesday night

I love to flush $50 down the drain days before Christmas

At least is wasn’t $350 that went down the drain

Confession from the Mother of a Tween-Aged Drama Queen

It all started this past Monday morning. We had gotten a ton of snow the day before. Paul had just stopped by the house to pick up his sunglasses before heading to work. He had forgotten them because he left very early to take his final. It was barely 9:00 a.m. when a call came in from the kids' school. I answered it and heard Emma crying. I put it on speaker so Paul could hear what was happening.

Emma told us that she had slipped on the ice running to the bus stop. She had hurt her arm badly but got on the bus anyway. Once she was at school she realized just how badly she was hurt when she tried to write at her desk. Paul's immediate reaction (remember that he grew up in South Dakota where ice injuries were very common) was to take her to get x-rays. My immediate reaction was that this was my slightly dramatic Emma and I was going to wait it out a bit. I did agree to go to the school to check things out.

I swallowed my pride and went and picked her up sans make-up and bra. When we got home I put her on the couch in-front of the TV and told her to take it easy. She had good color, no bruising and no swelling. As the day went on she said it felt better and she was acting like it was sore but overall she was fine.

The next morning as she was getting dressed she acted as though she was in a lot of pain. I had to take something by the school later that day and when I saw her she had her arm held against herself and her coat only over her right shoulder like she couldn't get her arm in the sleeve due to pain. Even though I knew in my gut she was fine I started to feel guilty so I made an appointment at the pediatricians office right after school.

She had convinced herself that she was going to need a cast and she was pretty nervous so she brought her new toy Strawberry the Webkinz.

The doctor who saw her was pretty convinced that she had broken something in her elbow. I thought they did the x-rays there but no. They wrote her a prescription and told me to take her to the hospital. She also got a groovy sling.
As we were leaving the pediatrician Paul called. I told him that we were off to the hospital. He said no, it would cost too much and that it would be better to go to urgent care. So we did.
Luckily it wasn't busy. The receptionist was awesome. She was very friendly and while we were chatting it up I showed her the prescription. She said if we had that it would be much cheaper to go to the hospital since we wouldn't need to see a doctor there first. At urgent care you have to pay to see a doctor, pay to get the x-rays and then pay someone else to read the x-rays. I called Paul and he said to go to the hospital then. So we did.

We got there and answered a ton of questions and was just about ready to go to radiology when I asked about how much it was going to cost. The base price was $350 dollars since we hadn't met our deductible. Paul was like WTH? So we went to the lobby to talk it over with Emma.

We wanted to know just how bad it hurt. He was still convinced that urgent care would only be one co-pay and therefore much cheaper. Emma sat and waited while we discussed our options.

Then the kids started to get hungry so we raided the vending machine. (I should've know she wasn't that hurt since she used her right arm to get munchies in her mouth.)

After calling our insurance company and discussing our options (this also required them to call urgent care while we waited in the hospital lobby) we decided to leave the hospital and go back to urgent care. At this point Paul took Andrew to get food and left Emma and I to fend for ourselves.

We waited for quite some time before being called back to have a doctor check her arm.

I have to give urgent car props for the great theme tree decor.

We really loved the gauze garland and ear-loop masks.
Finally we saw the doctor who decided that we needed...X-RAYS! Who would have thunk it? So we waited until the x-ray tech was ready.
Then she got a few x-rays taken.
And then we got to wait some more and kept ourselves occupied in the exam room.

After a long time they came in to tell us that decided they needed to compare to the right elbow to the left so they took her back for more x-rays. After they were done we waited some more. It seemed like forever. See why I wasn't that worried?
After looking at both elbows it was determined that Emma was perfectly fine.
It's amazing how quickly her arm felt better after she found out nothing was wrong with her. (Yes I am rolling my eyes) It was worth the money to have piece of mind but I really wish that Emma had my pain tolerance.