Scariest Mom Moment Ever

Started like any other evening.  Dinner was done and there were dishes to be washed.  Rami was running through the house playing with the girls.  Earlier in the day I had finished making the bean bags that I wanted to use for Maysoon’s party games.  As I stood there washing the dishes I thought about the drawstring bags that I had hoped to finish that night as well.  Fabric was cut, machine was out, family fed.  Everything was just right for a quiet and relaxing night of sewing.  Behind me and down the hall I heard Jenin’s door close and a bunch of screaming coming from the room.  Are we the only ones that play so loudly with our kids?  With the faucet running and my already crappy hearing I couldn’t decipher what they were yelling about.  Probably about how they want to keep Maysoon home and go to Chuck E. Cheese without her.  That’s when Rami began screaming my name in the most panicked voice I have ever heard in my 6 years of knowing him. My heart dropped, the hair on my head felt like a million splinters, and it felt as if my blood turned to ice.

Those first 10 seconds were the worst. I couldn’t figure out if it was Jenin or Maysoon that was hurt. Was it both of them!?! From the time they entered the room to the time Rami called my name was literally less than 30 seconds.  What happened!?!  It turns out Jenin had ran into the room, onto the arm of her rocking chair (plush sofa type, not the wooden ones) when she immediately rolled over and hit her head on the tracks of the closet doors.  The doors were removed before I had Maysoon in order to put the dresser in there. The tracks are flat and secured to the floor.  There are no sharp edges but the metal itself was enough to do damage.  On the back of her head, right in the middle of her two ponytails was a deep cut about 2 inches long.

Thank God (Alhamdulilah!!!) it didn’t bleed a lot but it was still enough to freak us out to the point of complete and utter confusion.  I called 911 and tried to give her our address.  I didn’t forget it but I had lost my voice two nights before and could hardly hear myself speak.  I repeated it over and over again trying to get her to hear me.  At the same time I was trying to calm Rami down who was running around like a chicken with its head cut off while carrying Jenin.  Maysoon was screaming and crying because it was time for her nap and all she wanted to do was to be fed and be put down.  I kept trying to tell Rami to sit down with her and stop moving her as the operator had instructed me.  Instead he kept yelling to cancel the paramedics that he was going to take her to the hospital himself. I told him to calm down because the fire department would be here any minute.  Please remember that I have no voice, people.  Complete chaos.  I handed Rami the phone to explain to the operator exactly what had happened and to give her our address.  Instead he grabs the phone telling her cancel everything he’s going to the hospital himself and hangs up in her face. I mustered up every ounce of energy in my body and put it into my voice, “WHY DID YOU HANG UP!?”  I call back and you can tell that the operator is agitated with me, “you hung up on me”.  I tried to explain it was my husband but she didn’t seem to believe me.

As the operator continued on with the instructions that Rami was doing the complete opposite of in front of me, the fire department showed up.  I quickly threw on my scarf though it felt like it was taking ten minutes.  When I turned the corner to the living room there were four paramedics and at least three more outside.  They cleaned her up assuring us that she’s fine and just needed a couple of stitches.  So I fed Maysoon, put her down for her nap, and left to the ER with Jenin.

It took one hour for them to actually register her in, another hour waiting to be called, and then an hour waiting for the doctor to come in and see her.  Waiting three hours any other occasion would have been fine, but I had a three year old with an open wound on the back of her head in a waiting room full of sick people coughing and sneezing.  My hoodie became stained with blood marks as I tried to keep her head against my chest. When the doctor came in, he determined that she would need a few staples that will be taken out after a week.

The procedure broke my heart.  They wrapped her upper body [read: arms] in a sheet.  She then had to lay down on her stomach as me and the nurse held her down.  It took everything inside of me not to cry so that she wouldn’t be scared.  I’ll spare you the gory details.  In the end she got six staples.  My poor baby, she kept begging me over and over to leave the hospital after that.  It took another 20 minutes before we got the discharge papers.

From the moment we left the house I promised her a special treat for being so brave.  She said she wanted to go to Target to pick something out, but as we passed Jamba Juice on the way to the hospital she decided she wanted a smoothie (she calls it “ice cream” but in Arabic) and a pretzel.   By the time we made it out of the ER we had only ten minutes to get there before they closed. Luckily it was a few blocks down and still were willing to make us our drinks.

Alhamdulilah (Thank God) she’s doing just fine.  As I sat in the waiting room last night along with all the other mothers with their children, I realized that moms seriously do have the toughest job on earth.

{Taken with my cell phone as we waited and waited and waited to be seen.}