What craziness the last 24 hours has been. After school school yesterday Matthew had an Ultimate Frisbee match. Game? Match ? Who knows? Is this a sport? A club? A competition. I don’t know. I know I am happy he is doing something fun and athletic (sort of) and social and although it takes a good deal of his time it is the first team thing he has ever participated in and first extracurricular activity also, so who am I to complain?…okay that was a hypothetical question. After his game Rob and I were meeting him at the school for a college readiness seminar that we wanted him to join us at. Yes meeting him after the game. You heard me correctly, thses are apparently not games parents go to watch or cheer on (if any other parents of the Frisbee team are reading this and were informed differently please rat my son out) otherwise of course I would have been there. As we park and meet Matthew up front he is excited to share he scored his first goal (I know nothing about Frisbee rules) and then proceeds to say he hit his head really hard and thinks he may have a concussion. Shit! It is always something. We tough out the entire 1.5 hour meeting, trying to concentrate 1. Because I am afraid Matthew may have a concussion 2. Because it is sinking in that we are in our first college readiness meeting for Matthew YYYIIIKKKEESSS! I also now realize if Matthew does really have a concussion that this 1.5 hour meeting is probably useless and Matthew will remember none of it. Shit! Well tons of good info at the meeting for me at least and I am only slightly traumatized by the closeness of “that reality” around the corner. Rob drives Matthew’s car home ’just in case’ and we decide if we should get Matthew checked out. We have never been in this situation. I guess we have been pretty luck so many years having two boys and no concussions. Oh yah, did I mention no sports played prior. Anyway, upon my own evaluation I didn’t think we needed to go get it checked out, but how could I not go. What if something were REALLY wrong and we didn’t look into it? How could I disregard Matthew’s complaints. Off we went to good old home away from home, Children’s Hospital. When we got there it was packed, I knew when we drove up it was going to be a LOOOOOONG night. As soon as we walked into the Emergency Department my germ radar went on high alert. I told them first thing that we had Daniel (a recent BMT patient ) at home and they put us in a side holding room away from all the waiting undiagnosed patients. We still need to be hyper vigilant for Daniel’s sake. We can’t bring anything home to him. We waited a few hours and as I thought it is possible Matthew has a slight concussion but probably just a good knock on the head. But as we waited a couple hours at the hospital I thought about how strange it was being there without Daniel and how different it was to not be dealing with anything life threatening. I knew Matthew was fine so I wasn’t really too worried. As we were waiting after about 30 minutes and we had been checked in and checked on a couple times Matthew asked me if everyone at the hospital was always this nice to us while we were at the hospital. I thought that was nice of him and really observant. I said yes, they always were. Everyone was always great in all of our experiences in every department we went through in every department (and there were many, many , many). After about 45 minutes in the actual room and Matthew, All 5’ 9” of him squirming trying to sleep in the bed and trying to get comfortable he started to kvetch and complain that the bed was so small and uncomfortable. He said “Man, is this the same bed Daniel had?” I said yes it was for 9 months so you can shut your mouth and not complain after less than an hour. He curled up with the not so soft hospital issued blanket and fell asleep pretty quick until the doctor came in. And sure enough when he did it was a quick examination to determine he had a good clunk on the head and should be fine. I guess it is good to assure us of this. He got a doctor’s not for school the next day and is tired and feeling a bit crappy but will be fine. I am not sorry I took him and would have felt worse had I not taken him.
This morning after dropoff I went to donate platelets. The woman that was checking me in and I got to talking and after a few minutes she recognized my name and made the Daniel connection. Well it was all over from there. She started going off on what an inspiration he has been for her ever since she found out who he was. She was so glad she got to be in his video ‘Broncos Go’ last year, well just her arm. She was standing right behind him and to the right and she was so happy to be in it but ‘darn it all to heck’ she said if it didn’t all happen in one take and only her arm and elbow got in the shot. Too funny. By the time I moved over from check in to the actual donation chair another phlebotomist congratulated me because she was at the game and saw us up on the screen. I can’t go anywhere in that building without someone knowing my kid, but it is for good reasons and I am proud. I got settled in my seat and started going through the movie book for disc to watch. They have the entire Netflix library so usually it takes me forever to decide but I was impulsive for once and just went to the last page and picked a drama called ‘The Ultimate Gift’ it looked like the right amount of minutes and whatever, how bad could it be. Awww shit. 20 minutes in and I am now committed to this movie and enter the cute little pale girl in a hat . Shit, shit, shit. Took me 3 seconds and my gut knew. She had Leukemia and then an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant. Why the fuck do they have this movie here. Now I am stuck in this chair with the headphones on, literally trapped by the table over me and one arm pinned to the table not able to move at all. I start bawling and can’t even reach far enough over to get a tissue from my bag. Screw it the I am in the chair for another 80 minutes of platelet donation and the movie has probably at least an hour and a half to go so I am all in at this point. The techs take notice and decide to leave me alone at this point. I have to admit I am a little concerned at this point about dehydration since I am bawling and not rehydrating becauase I don’t want to have to need to go pee (you can’t get up for the duration of your donation). I am definitely down a quart in tears alone, not including the platelets by now. My platelet donation ended before the movie and let me tell you the movie did not have a happy ending. Well maybe it did but I didn’t really get past the intertwined part with the little girl. Anyway. The great take away from my visit to the donation center is that I found out I can give more often than every two weeks which I will probably start doing once in a while. Plus I learned to choose my movies a little more carefully on future visits.
This morning after dropoff I went to donate platelets. The woman that was checking me in and I got to talking and after a few minutes she recognized my name and made the Daniel connection. Well it was all over from there. She started going off on what an inspiration he has been for her ever since she found out who he was. She was so glad she got to be in his video ‘Broncos Go’ last year, well just her arm. She was standing right behind him and to the right and she was so happy to be in it but ‘darn it all to heck’ she said if it didn’t all happen in one take and only her arm and elbow got in the shot. Too funny. By the time I moved over from check in to the actual donation chair another phlebotomist congratulated me because she was at the game and saw us up on the screen. I can’t go anywhere in that building without someone knowing my kid, but it is for good reasons and I am proud. I got settled in my seat and started going through the movie book for disc to watch. They have the entire Netflix library so usually it takes me forever to decide but I was impulsive for once and just went to the last page and picked a drama called ‘The Ultimate Gift’ it looked like the right amount of minutes and whatever, how bad could it be. Awww shit. 20 minutes in and I am now committed to this movie and enter the cute little pale girl in a hat . Shit, shit, shit. Took me 3 seconds and my gut knew. She had Leukemia and then an unsuccessful bone marrow transplant. Why the fuck do they have this movie here. Now I am stuck in this chair with the headphones on, literally trapped by the table over me and one arm pinned to the table not able to move at all. I start bawling and can’t even reach far enough over to get a tissue from my bag. Screw it the I am in the chair for another 80 minutes of platelet donation and the movie has probably at least an hour and a half to go so I am all in at this point. The techs take notice and decide to leave me alone at this point. I have to admit I am a little concerned at this point about dehydration since I am bawling and not rehydrating becauase I don’t want to have to need to go pee (you can’t get up for the duration of your donation). I am definitely down a quart in tears alone, not including the platelets by now. My platelet donation ended before the movie and let me tell you the movie did not have a happy ending. Well maybe it did but I didn’t really get past the intertwined part with the little girl. Anyway. The great take away from my visit to the donation center is that I found out I can give more often than every two weeks which I will probably start doing once in a while. Plus I learned to choose my movies a little more carefully on future visits.