Not In A Mood To Blog

Stanetta started with stabbing pains in her tummy on Easter Monday. We were having a day out in Warrington (good coffee but otherwise not a place I'd recommend for a mini-break). We headed for home thinking she just needed some anti-inflammatories but on the way back the pain got dramatically worse and so I headed the car towards our local hospital and drove, my hands shaking, through the Bank Holiday traffic to A&E. Magistrate or not, if the traffic hadn't have been so heavy, I would have broken some or all of the rules of the road to get her there even one minute faster.

Which reminds me : I'd like to apologise to all the oldies with tartan rugs on their parcel shelves and to the legion of bank holiday drivers of Rovers who were wearing driving gloves. You were in my way, but you weren't to know that. I confess I wished you'd all get out of my pigging way and stay out of my pigging way, and that's not nice. When your child is in pain, everyone in the world is an obstacle. I hope none of you were psychic to the extent that you would have perceived my hatred of you and your maddeningly pedantic driving. I hope it didn't spoil your trip to whichever National Trust property you were visiting. Sorry.

Anyway, after the most nerve-wracking and wretched drive of my life, we made it to the hospital. Fortunately there were few customers and so it looked like Stanetta could be seen relatively quickly. A boy came in after her who had been playing football on gravel (what could possibly go wrong). He was seen first ! Before my Stanetta !

In my mind I stood up and shouted "Oi ! Kid. You're a big girl's blouse. That's just a scratch. Wash it off and let your mammy kiss it better. You don't need to see the doctor. Scram." But I didn't.

Eventually Stanetta went in to be examined, her mum tagged along and I stayed in the waiting room watching the Bank Holiday victims arrive. I found myself trying to use telepathy to convince them that their symptoms didn't require treatment and that they shouldn't distract the doctors and nurses from the important job of fixing my Stanetta. It was a sorry set of victims - one had been medivac'ed from a skiing holiday with a broken leg, a tree had fallen on an elderly gardener and one overweight middle-aged man complained of chest pains after horsing around with his kids. Obstacles every one of them. I imagined barring the door to stop people wandering in distracting the doctors from their primary mission of fixing my Stanetta. I got some funny looks - I'm sure my scowl was a picture.

Stanetta was finally admitted to the children's ward and we waited a few painful hours to see whether it was just constipation. It wasn't. As time went on, it became increasingly likely that it was appendicitis and just before midnight she was operated on, and a swollen appendix removed.

And now she's in hospital recovering and I'm in no kind of shape to blog. Parents of sick children are boring - they don't have a waking thought that isn't about their sick kid and all they want from you (unless you're a doctor, a nurse or surgeon) is that you get out of the pigging way and stay out of the pigging way.