In which I remember to always listen to my Mommy Gut.

Yesterday was my birthday. But that is beside the point.

We are about 75% done with summer vacation in my house, and I believe we have been to the pediatrician's office every single week of summer. Is this what it means to have three kids? We had a great winter, and for that I am grateful; the baby was smaller and we were able to get through our school and extracurricular obligations largely unscathed. But this summer has been a doozy, and let me tell you about little C.'s adventure this weekend.

Last week, around about Wednesday morning, C. told me his toe hurt. He told me a few stories about it, none of which I was able to confirm -- Daddy had shut his toe in the refrigerator door (Daddy had not even opened the refrigerator that morning), Firstborn had slammed it in a door (there had been no door slamming). It was a mystery, but when I looked at it, I thought it looked maybe a little pink and maybe a little bruised; I figured he had stubbed it or tripped on something and it was achy. Over the next day or so, he would say his toe hurt intermittently, but I really just thought it was bruised.

Friday night, we went out to eat dinner with my parents at P.F. Chang's, where Firstborn threw a fit because I "wasn't driving fast enough" in the Friday night rush hour traffic and he was "bored now." Ohhhkay. He refused to face the table at dinner and sat with his chair turned around until dessert. Charming kid. Afterwards, on our way home, C. started holding his foot and moaning. After fifteen minutes of moaning, I said, "C., do you think you could keep it down back there?" (I am nothing if not sensitive to my children's aches and pains.)

"No, Mama, I can't stop!" He moaned. Mama alarm bells went off in my head. I picked up my cell and called Firstborn's godfather, the pediatrician in California. I am so glad he spent a zillion dollars and years in training to be my personal on-call physician. He is not quite as pleased to be regularly abused, but he complies nonetheless.

After describing the offending toe and symptoms, the godfather proclaimed that in his opinion, it was "Urgent Care Time!" and that just in case it was an infection, I should have him checked out. By now it was 8 PM on a Friday night. I hung up and looked at Husband. He scanned the toe and shrugged off my worries. "He's fine," he said. We'll give him some Tylenol. It'll be fine."

I was dubious, but I was also tired. And so I allowed Husband to give him a sketchy amount of Infant Tylenol and we got C. to bed. But in short order, he was up crying. We put him out on the family room couch and I laid down with him. He has a history of waking up disoriented and upset, and I wasn't sure if this was pain or just exhaustion. But soon enough, he woke again. And this time, he was frantic.

C. screamed like I have never heard anyone scream before. He screamed and sobbed hysterically for approximately 30 seconds before I threw on my clothes and informed Husband, who was trying in vain to get C. to take some Children's Motrin out of a cup, that we were going to Urgent Care. I put C. in the car and we drove the fifteen minutes to the downtown location. It was closing in on 11 PM, and the pediatric Urgent Care closes at 12. The entire way there, C. SCREAMED. He screamed in a way that made me think bugs were going to start crawling out of his ears, having eaten away parts of his brain. He couldn't talk coherently except to yell, "I ... can't... take... it... anymore!"

In my head, I was wondering "What the hell?!" but i was also wondering what I was going to say when I walked in the door to the clinic. When we got there, the best I could do was, "Uh... his toe hurts."

The receptionist looked at me skeptically. "Um... okaaaaaay." She gave me the forms. "Do you know we ask for payment up front? Do you know how much we charge?"

"Yes," I replied ruefully. I know too well. I was there two weeks ago with C. when he acquired eye and ear infections the same day at camp.

C. kept curling up and trying to sleep, first in the waiting room chairs, then on the triage table, then in the patient room. The doctor had his toe x-rayed and she looked at it intently. It was red, a bit swollen, and we couldn't even look at it too much without C. screaming. It was infected. The doctor started dropping words like "staph" and "MRSA," and I had visions of C.'s toe falling off. The doctor gave him an injection of antibiotics, had a blood culture drawn from his hand, and sent us home with prescriptions for a mack daddy antibiotic and probiotics and instructions to return the next night, no exceptions.

After a weekend of worry, C.'s toe looks like it is going to survive. I took him to the pediatrician yesterday for another follow-up, and we left around 3:30 PM.

At 4:57 PM, C. stuck a tiny, funnel-shaped, translucent orange Lego up his nose. I couldn't see it, and he was, once again, screaming in agony. I called the doctor. He said I could take him back to Urgent Care (third time in four days?) or try and find it myself, and if I had to, I could take him to an ENT the next day.

It was my birthday. We had dinner planned. And Husband is out of state. I could do it. I didn't need Urgent Care for this. Besides, they are probably on the verge of calling CPS.

I put C. on the floor, tilted his head back, and shoved a maglite right up close to his nose. There it was. I stuck my mom's Tweezers up there and grabbed the little sucker. C. yelped, but it was out. And off to Carrabba's we went.

I *knew* C.'s toe needed treatment, and I *knew* his nose, Lego-filled or not, didn't. I need to learn to trust my guts. They are pretty good guts.

And if C. ever shoves something else up his nose (this is the third object I have removed from his nose in his lifetime), he's going to have more than a nostril to worry about from me.

Also? I could not even make this shit up! Seriously!