The Beach. The Eye. The ER.

The title says it all.

THE BEACH
It was decided at 9:00pm last night that we'd head to the beach today. With a late phone call to Christina, our party of 4 increased by 3 to a party of 7 for a day of fun in the sand and sun. Truong left for a round of golf at 5:30am this morning and while he was gone, I got a phone call from Shana. Turns out Gina got the mystery DiDodo fever last night so Patrick's plan of taking his kids to Huntington Beach to watch the ProAM surfing contest was tanked. So I invited the DiDodo Boys to come to Corona del Mar with us. That bumped our beach group by 2, making it a total of 9 beach goers. Truong came home from golfing, saw our neighbor Charlie outside doing something and invited them too. I guess Charlie's wife (with a brand new #3) was cool with the boys getting out of her hair and granted them permission, increasing the party by another 3 - a grand total of 12. Whew! Larger than we planned but the more the merrier.

The kids had a great time. Digging trenches, boogie boarding, making a moat, body surfing - they did it all. Well, almost everyone had a great time. Malia had a so-so time. She is definitely not a beach bunny. The surf was pretty high today and under normal circumstances she's not enthralled with waves anyway, so today she really didn't want anything to do with them. For Malia to enjoy the beach, you'd have took away the surf and basically make the ocean a large pool. By 1:00pm, she was ready to go home -- as demonstrated by her wrapping herself around Truong and telling him: "Daddy, Mia tired. Mia want ice cream."

The bigger kids (and Trevor) were having a great time so we didn't leave there until close to 3:00pm. Kael did not nap at all and Malia only napped for about 40 minutes so I knew tonight was going to be pretty rough.

THE EYE
After an early dinner where Kael all but fell asleep in his food, I let the kids wind down by watching a bit of TV while we cleaned up. All of a sudden Kael ran to me screaming "MY EYE! MY EYE!" His hands are furiously rubbing his left eye and tears are running down his face. I try to get him to stop rubbing in fear of him damaging his eye but something must have really been stuck in there because in the end, both Truong and I had to restrain him. Over the course of 30 minutes, I flushed his eye with water but he was still pretty hysterical, refusing to open his eye. At one point he said that it hurt so much and asked if he was going to die (?!?!). Even with me prying his eye lid open and peering in there with a flashlight, I couldn't see what was bothering him. It was decided that after 45 minutes with Kael unable to open his eye, slight swelling, profuse tearing and still slightly hysterical, that we would go to the Urgent Care to have it looked at.

THE ER
I have never been to the Urgent Care. Hell, I don't even know where it is. However, while Shana hasn't been what I call a regular visitor, let's just say she knows her way around there. She directed me to the nearest Urgent Care, about 13 minutes away. Unfortunately, Urgent Care there really means "Urgent Care on Sunday until 5pm -- after that you're out of luck." Can they still call it "Urgent" if that's the case?! Anyway, we then head to St. Joseph's ER as Kael's eye is still swollen, he still can't open it and he says he's still in tremendous pain. We get there, I check in, Truong sits down with Kael in his lap. After I get all the paperwork done and submitted, I sit down next to Truong. That's when Kael started peppering me with questions. Mostly pertaining to why this place looks so different from his pediatrician's office. It was then that I noticed his eye is open and he's looking around. Truong and I share a "Are you kidding me?!" look. I asked Kael about his eye and was told that when it hurts, he closes his eye, but it's not hurting anymore so he can open it now.

Yeah, I'll bet...

Just great. After all that and he's fine. I question him a bit more and he said it still hurt a bit but not as bad. Since we were there, I decide to see the doctor anyway to rule out any kind of corneal abrasion. After a total time of 90 minutes, with the registrar telling me it must be fun having Kael at home because he's so "inquisitive" and the doctor and his nurse bascically telling me the same thing because he unloaded the questions on them during the eye exam (what's that mirror? why are you putting drops in my eye? what's the light for? why is that light blue? what do you see? why do you have to look in there?), it was ruled that Kael did indeed have something in his eye but it wasn't there anymore. However, due to his vigorous rubbing, he had multiple scratches on the top half of his cornea, causing him pain. The treatment is an antibiotic ointment in the eye, 4 times a day for 5 days. Hopefully the ointment will do the trick otherwise I have to take him in to see his regular pediatrician.

And so concludes our Sunday. Another week begins tomorrow. Yahoo!