If you look closely at this picture of our Joey, you might notice, on the left side of his forehead, a bunch of steri-strips. The things you use to close a wound. Hold it together. And thus really could have been invented for little Jo-jo.

We were eating dinner, Friday night, usual, noisy, bit’a chicken, some wine, Lila was colouring at the table, Joey was running round like a lunatic. All perfectly normal and (relatively) calm and sedate. Then came a ‘thump’. But possibly the most horrible thump ever. The sound of a head meeting something hard. In this case the corner of a stone kitchen unit. Everyone froze, turned to Joey, who screamed and appeared to have a hole in his forehead. Which then started to bleed. Quite a lot, as head wounds do.

His mummy grabbed him, I grabbed a bunch of tissues and dived on him. Pressure. That’s what you need. His aunt grabbed some frozen strawberries but instead of making a smoothie, put those on his head too. Ice the wound. And thus we stayed, all in shock, for a while until we dared look again. Half inch vertical ‘hole’. Oh dear. But the bleeding had stopped and we had some steri-strips. But, someone had the bright idea of running next door and getting the resident Pediatrician to come round.

And she was lovely, but a real killjoy. Yes, the wound now looks fine, bleeding stopped, blah, blah, blah. Ok, shall we bind it with steri-strips then? Oh no, with head wounds he needs to go to hospital for concussion protocol. But he didn’t pass out, wasn’t sick, and in fact was pretty much ok. No, he must go. Best if mummy and daddy go with.

Lila was already upstairs packing her suitcase. A sleepover. At our house. She was selecting books, making sure her ipad was charged for the morning, gathering clothes and, basically filled the case.

Joey was seen so quickly and efficiently at the Royal Free (where kids are prioritised and kids bleeding from headwounds even more so) that they’d checked him, glued him (its what you do) and put a few strips on within 1 hour. By Saturday morning it was forgotten. By him at least, may take the rest of us a while.

And so impressed was I with the hospital and so fed up with coughing all night long every night for about 10 days, that I went myself on Saturday morning. I tried the ‘children’s entrance’ but met the NHS equivalent of a night club bouncer who refused me entry. 2 hours later I was seen by a doctor. Then a chest x-ray, back to the docs, all fairly efficient at that point. Took my prescription to the dispensary, and got my little ticket with a number. 69. On the board it showed that 62 and 63 were now ready, so I’m just 6 away. How good is that? At McDonalds it would take 4 minutes.

Then it began: the death of a thousand knives. As I grabbed a coffee, stirred it, drank it, slowly, read my kindle, looked up at the board and… 62 and 63 still ready, nothing else. And so it went on. For over an hour.

At least the drugs do (seem to) work

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx