Mom! My stomach REALLY hurts.

"What do you want me to do, take you to the hospital?"
"Yes."

"Really?"

"Can we go right now?"

It's midnight on Sunday and he's just been on the computer, diagnosing himself.

We head down to Emergency (my favorite place to be at midnight) prepared to be in the waiting room for awhile. Well, based on my previous experience in ER waitng rooms, I know it'll be 4 hours before Max'll get looked at. Max on the other hand, is not prepared to wait even 5 minutes. He's in pain. He wants relief NOW.

He did a bang up job moaning and groaning all over that waiting room. He rolled his eyes way back in his head; he walked around, shrouded in our family room blanket, bent over in half, making crying sounds without the tears; he lay the blanket out on the floor and curled up in the fetal position whimpering ... you shoulda been there. It was an academy award winning performance.

Finally, at around 4 they ushered us into the ER beds area, where Max was asked to pee in a cup and put on a gown, with the opening at the back. So he put it on over his clothes and hopped onto the gurney. I made him hop off and remove his clothes. A nurse came by and took 3 vials of blood while we listened to the 92 year old woman in the bed next to Max get an enema. She was to hold it in as long as possible, but "Oh dear, it's starting to leak out" she exclaimed after 2 minutes.

Much discussion of her bowel movements occured over the course of 3 hours.

The chatty, bratty, silk-pajama clad, snotty 10 year old girl in the bed on the other side of Max had her mother wrapped around her little finger much to the annoyance of the entire ER staff. She carried on and on and on and on. And needed attention from every person in the area. And wanted her dad to bring over every toy she owns PLUS go buy her some new ones. No one could find anything wrong with her, so finally at 5 am they sent her home.

At 5, Max's lab results came back indicating there was something wrong with my boy. The good doc pressed his fingers here and here and watched Max jump and writhe in pain. He declared that Max had a faulty internal organ (his appendix) and told us to prepare ourselves for it's imminent removal. We just needed to wait for the surgeon to see him. In the meantime Max was given some pain meds intravenously which allowed him to fall asleep. I was not given pain meds, so I sat upright in the world's most uncomfortable chair and listened to all the drama around me.

Two hours later Max was rolled to the pediatric ward, transferred to a hospital bed, given some more morphine and allowed to sleep some more. I slouched in a wide bottomed chair and tried very hard not to snore while being wide awake.

The surgeon dropped by at 1 pm and agreed that the appendix had to go. He suggested it would happen much later in the day, so Max was filled up with some more morphine and I went home. I seriously needed a shower and another layer of makeup.

I brought the DVD player back to the hospital and Max and I settled in to watch Good Morning, Vietnam, each with our own set of headphones.