The long hours of waiting

I had to take my son to Hospital last night.

I got home from work at 7:30 to find him curled up on the sofa with a big headache. He said it had come ono suddenly, almost as if hit on the head, and was getting worse. As he moved his head around, the pain seemd to move. He was also nauseous, shaking, and had blurred vision.

A couple of years ago a friend's daughter had a sudden headache and was sent home from school. That evening she lapsed into a coma, and a week later she had died from waht proved to be a brain hemorrage. And now, here was my son, complaining of a sudden headache.

The National Health Service has closed down the children's emergency service at my loal hospital 10 minutes away, and so I had to negotiate the tail end of the rush hour to get him to the replacement children's emergency placement in the next town, 20 minutes away. 20 minutes is an eternity when you think your son is dying! I could have called an ambulance, but that would have probably taken even longer to arrive at our house.

On the way he started to vomit.

I drove as quick as possible, while trying to be reassuring to him ("I always drive like this when I'm alone")

The triage nurse could see that he was in abad way and moved him quickly into the emergency ward. He was still vomitting.

It's at times like this that you notice silly things - his ear was full of soil from the football pitch. His girlfriend had drawn love hearts in biro on his arm. He didn't look very well kept - would they blame me if it turned out to be serious?

THe doctor - a young guy - was very good, very thorough, and with careful questioning established that the headache had not started instantaneously, but over about 30 seconds. i started to relax. I was soon convinced that it was just a migraine - twice as abad as any he had before, but just a migraine. (Well, actually my sister-in-law died of a migraine, so its not 'just' a migraine, but a lot better than a brain hemorage). ThHe doctor also eliminated meningitis - my other worry.

My son was now actually starting to feel better. I hoped they would soon let us go home, but intead they referred us to the peadiatric ward to get a proper diagnosis of migraine rather than just my say-so. I phoned my wife to tell her not to worry, and to say we would still be about 3 hours.

More waiting. More waiting.

Eventually we were seen by the pediatric doctor. More thorough tests - more examination of his grubby ears! She also concluded that it ws probably migraine. "You can go home..(HOPE!).. but I'll just check with the Registrar (GLOOM!). I had a bet with my son - who was now much better and very chatty - that we would still be there at 12:30. I won! Finally a nurse popped her head in and said we could go. We got home, much more quickly on the now empty roads, at 1am.

His all goes to show that when it matters, you re-discover how much you love your kids. I had a great time for one-to-one conversation with him.

We are thankful to God that it was not something worse. Christians are not exempt from the troubles of this world. (The girl mentioned above was the daughter of a Baptist pastor).

We are thankful to have a national health service, free at the point of need, and although I moan about the trip to the next town, if i lived in Africa that would be 3 days.