The emergency room? Yes, that's exactly the outing I was missing most during quarantine

Friday night we were all a little cagey after a week of remote learning and working. It snowed that day and was pretty cold, so we didn't go outside as much as we usually do. After dinner the boys were roughhousing a lot and Beckett seemed especially exhausted and extra loosey-goosey with his body, which is his sign that he's tired. He was scolded for hurting one of his brothers and so he went upstairs to the playroom, our padded romper room where it's ALMOST impossible to hurt yourself. Pretty soon we heard a thump and screaming. Apparently Beckett had been walking backwards in the playroom, which is always messy with pillows and blankets that have been thrown around, and he tripped and fell backwards on the only remotely dangerous thing in the room, the metal drawer pull. There was blood and a cut but we couldn't see it well because he didn't like us rooting around by it, which was in his hair at the back of his head. We sent pictures to Mama Sara and Nitsan, our on-call medical experts, and their consensus was that we should probably go to the ER to have it glued or sutured. I called ahead to the pediatric after hours clinic at Upstate, and they said there was no wait, so we put on our masks and left.

We could not have had a better experience at the clinic. We walked through without seeing anyone until we got to the admissions area, where someone took our temperature and gave us a mask to put on over our homemade masks. We walked straight back to triage, where I gave our insurance information ("Oh, it's Beckett! Wow, you've been here a lot!") and before we were even done with the three minute long process, the doctor and nurse came out to meet us. The waiting room was empty and there weren't any other patients there. They ended up cleaning out the wound, discovering it was smaller than we had feared, and just dressed it and got us out of there. I think we were gone for a total of about 55 minutes, back home and in bed by 9:15.

Do I wish we had NOT had to go to the emergency room? YES! But we had just about the best experience we could possibly have had, and Beckett's not seriously injured, which is great.