unexceptionalparenting

You know when you’re going through a tough time and people say, “You’ll laugh about this one day”?

I’m kinda having one of those moments right now.

My last post here was about my daughter undergoing invasive scans to check the size of her cancerous tumors. Implied in that was all the pain this child has suffered since she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma as a baby, from the surgeries to the debilitating rounds of chemotherapy, the nights in the ER with sudden fevers to the non-stop vomiting and diarrhea.

So you can imagine something minor would leave her primary caregiver, me, completely unfazed.

Not even close.

Yesterday afternoon, when the same surviving cancer rock star daughter was closing the car door, she managed to trap her pinky in it.  As in, the door was ALL THE WAY SHUT, and she was shrieking and trying to pull her hand out.

And what did I, mother of a cancer patient, veteran of some seriously scary s—t do? I freaked the f—k out.

“NO!!!!!” I screamed, rushing to her and yanking the door open. Her pinky was slightly bent. And purple. Not good signs, but nothing major, at least compared to the botched biopsy they did on her skull five years ago.

“My baby! My baby!” I wailed, completely out of proportion to the situation at hand, hugging her tight.

“Jack!” I yelled to my son. “Get in the car, we’re going to the hospital.”

A skilled bystander in many a medical crisis, my son said, “Yay! Can I bring my iPad?”

Let me tell you I drove like I was heading to the Hazzard County line, Roscoe P. Coltrane in hot pursuit.

“Move! Please, move!” I called out to absolutely no one who could hear me. “This is an emergency.”

“Mom, you forgot the radio,” my son reminded me.

I punched the dial distractedly.

“No, not this song.”

In a Linda Blair voice I shouted, “I can’t change it, I’m driving! Your sister is in terrible pain!”

He glanced over at her.

“She looks fine to me.”

In truth she did. She had calmed down a lot and just sat sobbing quietly.

This didn’t stop me from screeching into the emergency room parking lot practically on two wheels, scooping my daughter up and running for the entrance.

“Mom! Wait for me!” my son called.

As always, the ER receptionists were calm and collected, which always drives me crazy. My daughter was quickly triaged and brought back for an X-ray.

“No shots?” my daughter asked everyone we encountered, from the receptionist to the janitor to a woman sitting with her sick baby in the waiting room.

“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?” the X-ray technician asked me as she draped a lead apron over my daughter.

“I would kick my husband’s a—,” I replied.

“I’ll take that as a ‘No,’” she said.

Back in the waiting room, my daughter asked if she would need a shot and then demanded to know where the gift shop was and if they sold stuffed animals. This kid knows her hospitals.

In next to no time, she was seen by a doctor, who, after assuring my daughter she wouldn’t need a shot, declared the pinky not broken, just swollen and tender. She wrapped it in a splint and told me to take her to an orthopedic surgeon in a week’s time to check for permanent damage.

My daughter was disappointed she didn’t get a cast, and downright aghast that she didn’t get to ride out on a wheelchair, which is how she usually exits the hospital.

“At least you don’t have to get any shots,” I reminded her.

All told, we were home in time for dinner, bath and bed.

And when the house was finally quiet, I had to laugh. Not because my daughter had been hurt, but because it was such a minor incident compared to everything she has gone through. If this is as bad as it gets from now on out, we’re going to be fine.

At least, we will be if I can learn to CALM THE EFF DOWN.