This afternoon Ben woke up 30 minutes into his nap. I was knitting and watching So You Think You Can Dance in the living room, and I heard him crying. I went into the hallway and he was standing in the doorway of my bedroom (he naps in our room because whenever both kids nap in the same room no one actually naps), sobbing and clutching the lower right quadrant of his abdomen, crying "it hurts so bad!" Now, I've seen enough episodes of Scrubs, ER and Grey's Anatomy to know what that means. I mean, I'm practically a doctor. So I picked him up and we curled up on the couch and watched SYTYCD until I could figure out what to do. I checked in periodically. He was no longer freaking out, but he was clearly unwell. I thought about how he hadn't wanted to eat anything in the last day or two. I had chalked it up to the heat, but now maybe it made more sense. I did what any medical expert like myself would do: I googled it. Dr. Sears said to have him try to jump up and down. He didn't want to. Was that a sign? Or just proof that Ben is Ben? I called Matt. I called the Kaiser nurse line (which, seriously, has never actually been helpful, so I'm not sure why I try). I waited. Gradually, he seemed to improve. But seriously--he had been in so much pain. I called my brother and cancelled our weekend trip to his house. Ben seemed to not be hurting so much anymore, but we didn't want to head up the mountain and then suddenly end up in the ER in San Bernardino. We decided to wait and see.
Then Matt came home. And this happened:
Matt: Hey everybody!
Ben: Daddy, guess what? I fell off the bed!
Me: Wait, what?!?!?!
Oops.
I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau
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