Emergency Room Christmas

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that your 2020 is off to a good start. Today, I’m going to share a story that goes way back to a time when the Pittsburgh Steelers were 8-7 and still had a chance to reach the postseason. A time before Jake Guentzel of the Pittsburgh Penguins needed shoulder surgery. Yes, I’m going all the way back to December 25, 2019.

On Christmas, my family joined millions of others across the country by visiting a movie theater. We purchased tickets to see the animated film "Spies In Disguise" featuring the voices of Will Smith and Tom Holland.



We bought popcorn for the entire family to enjoy. Then, we sat in our reclining seats to eat our popcorn and watch the film. I should probably mention that patrons 3 and over are required to purchase their own tickets. Kids that are under 3, like Luigi (2) get in for free and have to sit on your lap. Not a problem.

During the movie, both The Moose (8) and Pedro Tulo (5) really enjoyed the ability to move their seats into a reclining position including an adjustable footrest. Near the end of the movie, Luigi decided that he had enough of sitting on someone’s lap and wanted to move around a little. There was plenty of room in our row to do this, and he could easily go between our four seats. Apparently not paying attention to his brother, The Moose closed the adjustable footrest...on Luigi’s foot. Luigi started screaming, so I quickly took him out of the theater. He calmed down after a few minutes, but he refused to let me put him down and he kept his head on my shoulder. We eventually went back inside because I had to know if Will Smith would turn back into a person from a pigeon. (I won’t spoil this for you.) I stood in the back with Luigi still in my arms. The movie ended, and we went home. Luigi was unable to put any weight on his foot though and cried whenever we tried to put him down to walk. With limited options on Christmas day (and agreement from our on-call pediatrician), my wife took Luigi to the emergency room while I stayed home with the older boys. The short story (since I wasn’t there) is that all of the X-Rays came back negative, Luigi was given some ibuprofen, and they came home. He also received Shaggy and The Headless Horseman as a gift from the hospital, so that almost made the trip worthwhile (especially since I haven't received a bill yet).

Oh, I also picked up some Chinese food. Christmas tradition!

Luigi limped some for the days following Christmas, and he still sometimes winces a little when we put on his shoe, but he’s fine. I think a New Year’s resolution for 2020 is to visit the emergency room less as a family this year than the two times we visited in 2019. In addition, between this incident and how I barely escaped Frozen 2, perhaps I shouldn’t take my family to the movies anymore!