Tracy’s post on stomach flu misery reminded me of the first time Elijah got sick with a stomach bug. He was about 2 years old and extremely strong willed. He refused to eat or drink anything, I assume because he thought it’d just make him throw up again. A day or two later I realized he was getting really dehydrated. It was a holiday so the doctor’s office was closed. I ended up taking him to the ER.
The ER doctor who saw us was really super nice. The nurse told me if I couldn’t get Elijah to drink anything, they’d have to give him an IV. Why did she think I was there? I knew he wouldn’t drink anything. This was a toddler who once tried to move a car out of his way by pushing on it’s wheel. But I let her try to get him to drink some juice. No go. She also gave the other kids some juice, which I thought was nice.
I had to help them strap my two year old down so they could put an IV in his arm. Once it was in, he was ok with it, but they put it in his inner elbow, and he needed to keep his arm straight. The only way he’d do that was if I laid down with him and held it straight.
Unfortunately the bed they had him in was more like a dentist’s chair—very narrow, so it was hard for me to lie down next to him. He finally fell asleep, and I moved to a chair next to the bed. He promptly rolled over and fell off the bed onto the floor.
The doctor heard the crash and came running from across the ER to make sure Elijah was ok. He was fine, but I was impressed with how the doctor came running so fast. What a great doctor, I thought.
Elijah felt a lot better once he had some fluids in him, and he didn’t puke again. He was a little traumatized from his hospital experience, though, and didn’t want me putting him to bed alone for a night or two.
I was a little traumatized months later when I read in the newspaper that the doctor who treated Elijah killed his wife. After getting her a life insurance policy. He hit her over the head with something to kill her, then put her in her car and made it run down a hill to try to make it look like she’d died in a car accident. When the police came to his door to notify him that they’d found his wife dead in her car, he excused himself, went into the bathroom, and stabbed himself in the chest with a scapel. The policemen, who at that point thought she’d died from a car accident, followed him and managed to save his life. If the cops hadn’t been right behind him, he would’ve died—he was a doctor and knew just where to stab himself to cause the most damage.
I don’t remember what happened with the trial, I think he went into a mental institution.
