Sol.: I Hate Your Child!

I hate dealing with kids in the ER. They’re whiny, needy and completely irrational. So whenever parents bring their kids into our ER, I try to avoid the little bastards as much as possible.

I know that may seem a little cruel–me hating kids and all–but they can really be a pain in the ass when you’re trying to get some work done.

It takes more time to deal with a kid. The smallest things take three or four times longer with a kid than it would with most adults.

Take stitching up a cut.  On your normal adult, it takes 10 minutes tops, and very little effort on our part; the doc and one tech can usually get the job done.

For a kid, it can take as long as 30 minutes, and it’ll take a doc, two nurses and a tech to hold the little assholes down. It’s a real bitch.

So a few months back I came up with what, at the time, I thought was a good technique to pacify kids in distress. I would walk in the room, turn on the TV and tell them to choose from a list of children’s movies our ER has on demand.

Kids love animated movies, I figured if I popped one on, they’d be glued to the TV and would distract them from what we had to do.

Strait jackets for kids — an ER technique….

 

A typical exchange goes like this…

“Hey, little guy.”

“Hi.”

“You want to watch a movie? We got a bunch of cool movies.”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, let’s see, we have Despicable Me, Toy Story 3, Cars 2…”

“CARS 2!!!!!!”

“Good choice. Here you go.”

And the little punk is hooked. Never mind he’s bleeding from his head. Never mind that seconds earlier he was crying and screaming and kicking. His favorite movie is on, and there is nothing in this world that is going to keep him from watching.

Good technique, right?

Wrong…

Now, I didn’t realize it at first, but it dawned upon me a couple weeks back how twisted what I was doing was. I realized it as we were trying to stitch up this little boy’s cut.

The doc got me and two nurses to go in with him. Before we went in, I grabbed what is the equivalent of a straight jacket for kids so we could strap him down.

Typical kid in ER….

 

We walked in and the kid was still watching his movie. He was oblivious to us up into the moment we picked him up and strapped him down. Then the screaming and crying and kicking began.

Not to worry, I thought, we have the movie on.

So as the nurses held his legs and torso down, and I held his head down, the doc turned on the ceiling lap, which he aimed toward the kid’s face, and began numbing up his forehead with a syringe.

The kid fought and bucked and cried, as what must have looked like four strange giants pinned him to the cart.

We offered him words of encouragement while we restrained him.

“You’re doing good, buddy,” the doc said.

“You’re a big and brave boy,” one of the nurses said.

“Daddy is going to buy you some ice cream after,” the other nurse said.

None of it worked, so we resorted to the movie.

“Watch the movie,” I said as I gripped his head and held it against the cart, sweat dripping from my forehead.

“Yeah, watch your favorite movie,” the doc said, as he stuck the kid’s head with the syringe.

I turned his head so it faced the tv.

The kid just screamed and cried and fought as he was forced to watch. But we all maintained pressure, pinning him down despite his resistance.

Then it hit me. What we were doing would forever associate this traumatic moment with his favorite movie. He would always connect that experience with Cars 2, so that every time he saw the movie, he would remember four giants pinning him down as one of them stuck a needle in his head and mommy and daddy looked on helplessly.

I felt bad for a moment. I had ruined this kid’s favorite movie, while taking away a bit of his innocence.

Then I snapped out of it and remembered I hate kids.

“Watch your favorite movie, little guy.”

He looked up into my eyes with a look of terror on his face. I just smiled back at him and held his head down as I thought: Grow up already, will you?

Editor’s Note: Sol‘s last post for The Third City was Nurse Chucky….

• share:
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz up
• Tweet this
• Tell a friend