How a Trip to the Emergency Department Taught Me a Valuable Life Lesson
I will never look at Instagram the same
At 8 am on Wednesday, we were already running late to drop the kids to daycare. Out of nowhere, my son started screaming at the top of his lungs.
He wanted to do nothing but scream. I thought maybe my daughter hit him, but no, she wasn’t even close to him.
He kept pulling on his ear, and I noticed some discharge coming out. I realised this might be an ear infection.
I rushed to give him some pain relief and told my husband to drop my daughter off, my son was staying home today.
It takes 20–30 minutes for pain relief to kick in; in those 30 minutes, life was painful. His screaming didn’t stop for a second.
I didn’t have time to brush my teeth or change my clothes to take him to the nearest clinic; I just had to go now.
As I turned on the car and began to drive off, all I wanted in that moment was for the screaming to stop. I just didn’t want him to be in pain.
I usually don’t push for antibiotics unless absolutely necessary, but at that moment, I was willing for anything to be given to get him out of his misery.
As I was about to park the car in the clinic, I noticed the screaming stop. He fell asleep while crying and holding onto his ear. It had been 20 minutes, and the medication kicked in, I thought.
So in that moment of unexpected silence, I take out my phone and I type “ear infection in toddler when to worry.”
I know I shouldn’t have put myself down that rabbit hole, but all I wanted to know was any symptom that I knew he didn’t have and that could put me at peace.
The first thing I read was that if there is a discharge, you should seek medical care. Okay, so he did have ear discharge. The second thing is, if his ear is red and he is in severe pain. Okay, that’s another symptom he had, so now I’m beginning to worry.
At this point, I am ready to just go in, and suddenly “ear infection brain symptoms” shows up on my phone. I couldn’t and I just wouldn’t want to even think of that possibility. So I never click on it, but as I take out the pram to put my sleeping toddler in, a part of me begins to worry.
He had discharge from one ear, and he was tugging on to the other ear. That means the infection has spread to both ears.
My phone says “Infections in both ears simultaneously can be more serious.” I suddenly freeze.
My poor gentle boy was happily playing with his Spiderman this morning and bugging his older sister. He seemed happy and content, until he suddenly began screaming.
Had I missed something? Was I not a good mother for noticing the discharge earlier? I was a train wreck in those moments.
I rushed to walk to the clinic in the cold winter air. The receptionist asked, “How can we help you today?”, how can they help me? Well, they just need to make sure my son is fine is what I thought.
I started babbling about how his ear infection is in both ears, he was in severe pain and had discharge. She says ok and asks me to take a seat. She seemed pretty calm, so I am sure it’s nothing that serious I thought.
I took a seat and began Instagram scrolling as a 2-hour wait to see a doctor beckoned. Turns out they were severely understaffed that day due to many staff members calling in sick.
The first thing I see a video of a little boy with his hand missing. He says he was playing when, after a military attack, he saw his hand fall in front of him.
I see another video of a child asking, “Uncle, will my legs grow back?”
I then see a video of a woman screaming asking her 1 year old daughter to wake up. Everyone around her tries to comfort her but she is in disbelief that her daughter has died in an explosion.
The next video on my feed is of a couple trying the plank challenge, the video after that is of someone trying a viral cookie in Sydney and the video after that is of how to be a calm parent.
I freeze, I’ve scrolled through instagram like this countless times. I have cried seeing children in tears crying for their dead parents, and parents cry for their dead babies.
And I always scroll on and the normalcy in my life returns.
While look at my son sleeping in the pram next to me, I go through the flashback memories of all the 2 years with him, my labour experience with him, and my entire pregnancy. I think if anything was to happen to him, I would not be able to continue my life.
But here I was going on about my day, looking at recipes, thinking of my work and non-screen activities for my children, while someone else, a parent and a fellow human being is having their world robbed from them.
How can I live with that? How can people of the world continue on when someone’s home and their children are being erased from this world.
I then think how we’ve made ourselves live in a bubble filled with our own ambitions, worries and desires.
In order to not let the bubble pop, we continue to distract ourselves with sports, celebrity gossip and Netflix.
If we see something terrible happen in the world, “oh it’s so sad what is happening in Africa, hungry poor children” and “oh another conflict in the middle east, I don’t know much about it but I’m all about peace and stuff.”
Silence is complicity. We need to educate ourselves. We need to be advocates for those without a voice. We can’t say what is happening in another part of the world is not connected to us.
My son was given some antibiotics and he was fine, but if I was in any other part of the world or at a different point of history, my story could have ended differently.
Our privileged life means we’re the lucky ones, and it’s our responsibility to look after those who need it.
And it starts from not just scrolling away, but trying to know more and doing what we can, whether its donating or speaking up about it in our small circle of family, friends and co-workers.
