My Trip to Urgent Care During Covid-19
How many times at your home over the past few weeks have you shouted, “stop that, we can’t go to urgent care right now!” I know I have. Now I will remind you that my last name is Murphy and Murphy’s Law is real.
For those of you who don’t remember, Murphy’s Law states: “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”
I’ve lived with this my entire life. So that means that me, the guy who scolded his kid about having had an accident, had an accident.
There’s an embarrassing story about how I got a deep cut to my foot. Unfortunately, this is a MiniCast and article won’t allow me to tell you this story. Darn. Let’s just say it involved my right foot and a wicker basket.
The Injury
So let’s pick up where the action begins. My toe was bleeding a lot. Way more than I expected. But not enough to be really worried about. I was able to get to the paper towels pretty quick to try to stop the bleeding.
I hobbled to a chair and began to apply pressure. At the sight of the blood my son was uncomfortable. He knew something was wrong. Seeing this I wanted to help him through my problem and I also needed his help. I took this opportunity to teach him from this weird accident.
Thankfully, I sat down near my EDC bag that had my first aid kit in it. I told my son to get the kit out and bring it to me. The bleeding was pretty bad and I couldn’t get it stopped at first. It was at this point I realized a trip to an urgent care was going to be necessary. Stitches were in my future.
Normally I’d just have tapped myself up and taken the both of us to the urgent care and we’d have a funny story to tell. But this is the Covid-19 world we’re living in, I didn’t want to take him with me to an urgent care facility. This wasn’t worth the risk to his health.
My wife is essential at her job so I called her to come home. She dropped everything she was doing and came home. In the meantime I got the bleeding under control, but it wasn’t completely stopped. I kept talking to my son letting him know that I was going to be okay and how much of a big help he was in getting me what I needed.
I wanted him to feel like he was a part of what was happening, because he was I kept calm, which helped him stay calm. I watched his face, his behaviors and looked for signs that he might pass out at the sight of the blood, but he did great.
I walked him through everything that I was doing so he knew what was going on. I explained everything as it happened. I showed him how I was applying pressure, what gauze I was using and how to tape up a toe.
I actually have quite a bit of personal experience with toe trauma so I was uniquely qualified to show him.
My hope here was that he’d remember what I was doing so that in an emergency he’d know what to do and how to act. I even went over that it was okay for me to touch my own blood, but it wasn’t okay for him to touch anyone else's blood. He needed to wear gloves to help other people if he needed. Then I showed him the gloves in my kit and that I had them with me for emergencies.
Eventually we started laughing and cutting up. I could tell he was unsettled by what happened, but he was working through it and being brave to help me. So I thanked him for that. I have to remind myself that he’s just 7 years old. I’m sure you have to do that with your kids too.
My wife came home quickly and we looked at my toe. After a while we mounted up and drove to the urgent care near our home.
Urgent Care
The urgent care parking lot was a maze for drive-thru Covid-19 testing. We were met at the drop off by a nurse in scrubs, mask, face shield and a clipboard. She wasn’t letting me in despite the bloody bandage visible on my toe.
I wasn’t going to test this lady, but I think if I’d kept going into the building, she’d have maced me. She had to ask me a bunch of questions like, had I been out of the country recently, had I been running a fever, coughing and if I’d been in close contact with a Covid-19 carrier. I passed all of the questions and went inside.
I was the only person there and I was treated quickly once everyone knew I didn’t have the Coronavirus. So if you do have to make a trip to urgent care or the emergency room, be prepared to answer a lot of questions before you’re treated.
Laugh and Learn
I wanted to share this story with you so you could laugh at my expense and learn from my experience. I wanted to keep my son engaged with what was going on so he could learn what an urgent medical situation looked like and how to act.
I also wanted him to see that being able to care for yourself in an emergency was a valuable life skill. This was such a huge learning opportunity and I wanted to make the most of it and it helped me deal with the pain.
Be on the lookout for wicker baskets. They’re much more savage than they appear.
