Reason no. 34596 not to answer the 'advice line' at work: *ring ring...ring ring...* "Children's Emergency, Lara speaking" "Hi. My kid had his k.wires removed on Monday, and now he's, like, fallen into the pool and nearly 'drownded' himself, and his cast is like, all wet. So what I want to know is if I can take out all that cotton wool stuff that's all wet, and then take off the cast, wait till it dries, and then put it on again with a bandage to hold it on?" "Um...wait a second. How's your child? Is he breathing? I'm more concerned that you feel he was nearly drowned than about his cast." "Oh, yeah. His dad got him out. He had a big spew then we got mad at him about the cast. It's the third fucking time he's fallen into the pool since he came out of hospital on Monday" [it's Friday at this stage]...."So, anyway, can I just do that with the cast? I don't want to have to come and wait 5 hours to get a new one!" "I can't advise you to do that. A wet cast is doing nothing for support so therefor all I can recommend is that you bring him in to have a new cast put on. I definitely cannot advise you to do that yourself." They arrived an hour later. He was about 2 years old, and they were still yelling at him for falling in the pool(for the third time in less than a week) while they were busy at the barbeque. "You nearly got drownded, you idiot!" and then to me -"Yeah. Look, I rang up and the bitch of a nurse said I had to come up. So here we are..." I wish I had have said "Uh, that was me." But to be honest, all I wanted was for them to move away from the triage desk....
