A Trip to the ER

A Trip to the ER

I am putting Milo to bed on Sunday night following the birthday bash when he complains that his ear hurts a little. He’s been fine all day, but when Milo’s ear hurts, it almost always means he’s got an ear infection. But he goes to sleep quickly, so I think nothing of it until about 11:30, when Alec and I are in bed reading. We hear the door to the kids’ room open and Milo comes in crying—actually, wailing is more like it. It’s his ear of course. We give him some Tylenol and put him in bed between us. He’s in a lot of pain, crying and squirming. Nearly an hour later, he is asleep and sleeps until morning.

Alec has his first real meetings at the office, all day today, so it’s all me. I realize that this is the first time in my life that I have missed a day of work because of a sick child. Not that anyone actually expected me at the office, but I had planned to go in this morning. I suddenly feel a kinship with all of my sisters who juggle this kind of thing on a daily basis.

After we drop C.C. at school, we go first to the bank, where we bought our health insurance, to see if the health insurance card for Milo is ready, and to get a list of doctors we can use. There is a temporary card, which they think will work, and the only list of doctors is in Catalan, but I think I can navigate it.

Back home, I start calling doctors, but the numbers ring and ring, and there is no answering machine or service that picks up. So I wait until 10, and then 10:30 when finally folks begin to answer. Some of them speak to me in Spanish, which is okay, but some of them speak to me in Catalan, so I do my best. As near as I can tell, no one can see him today. So in the end we drive to a clinic that has an “Urgencia” or emergency room. Perhaps it’s the neighborhood I chose, or the fact that it’s Monday morning, but the scene is extremely calm. No noise, no chaos. We sign in and then wait in a small exam room with a picture of Winnie-the-Pooh, which Milo likes. Within twenty minutes the doctor comes and, as we suspected, Milo’s got an ear infection. Nothing serious, but we need to get some antibiotics and drops on our way home.

By far the worst part of the experience is that Dolores, our GPS system, refuses to function as I pull out of the parking garage. My sense of direction is non-existent, and I rely totally on Dolores. I start to sweat, and snap at Milo when he begins to ask me a gazillion questions from the back seat. Alec calls as I am circling one of Barcelona’s many roundabouts for the fifth time. I snap at him, too, when he asks where I am and I cannot tell him. I shouldn’t be talking on the phone anyway, so I hang up and keep driving. Eventually, using the position of the hills and the sea, and a few street names I recognize, I find my way back to familiar territory, and we make it home in one piece.

We have a couple of hours to recover before heading out again to pick up C.C., so we have some lunch, rest, watch Bugs Bunny.

Our good friends Etienne and Hal are in town for Atlanta, and we have dinner plans with them. Etienne was my boss when I worked at the Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment in San Francisco, and even though she was the executive director and I was a lowly graduate student intern, we got to be good buddies. It’s been too long since we’ve seen each other.

So Andrea the canguro is making her second appearance. I break the news to the kids on the way home from school and, as expected, the reaction is not good. Better than last time, I think, but not good. Andrea brings her 10 year old daughter, Jennifer, which helps. We get them all out to the park so that we can make our escape. I’ll spare you the gory details of how the night went, except to tell you that we will be sending a representative to the PTA cocktail party this Thursday rather than both of us attending.

Meanwhile, dinner is excellent. We eat with Etienne, Hal, and their friends Cheryl and Jerry at Ca l’Isidre, a restaurant in the Raval that uses local, seasonal ingredients and cooks both classic Catalan dishes and more modern fare. http://www.calisidre.com/calisidre_en.html. I have a dish of amazing sautéed mushrooms to start—meaty and garlicky, followed by grilled prawns with sea salt and finally coconut milk ice cream. Alec has the goat.

Dinner lasts more than three hours, and it’s after midnight when we finish. The metro is closed, so we take a cab. Fortunately, all is quiet. Both kids are sleeping like spoons in our bed, along with Bunny, Snuffy Dog, and Blue Guy.