I realized how very difficult it is to get medical care in the US yesterday. Lots of people have told me that but i came about first hand information yesterday. Dont get e wrong.. if u r in a trauma condition or if you are grieviously injured iam sure that the EC reacts differently. Let me tell you what happened. A door slammed into my foot yestreday and ripped my toe nail off. At least nearly off.. it was hanging off my Great Toe with the help of a piece of skin. Sound euuuugghhhh.??? Looked verrry euuuuughhhhh... So there i was... Great toe bleeding...quite a lot and in pain... I thought i would pluck the nail off ...put on some anti septic and i would be done. Of course it will hurt but it will be done, see? I was getting around to doing it too... clipping off the toe a bit by bit and bracing myself, reassuring myself that it is not going to hurt when my husband browbeat me into going to the emergency and getting done by a doctor. We were there...teh registration took a while and then we were in th waiting room for around 45 minutes with our daughter running all around and being herself.....being a child at two... a pain:)We stuck a lollipop in her mouth hoping that it would at least reduce the noise if not the whirlwind activity. All the while my toe nail is swinging dolefully by the side of my toe and bleeding AND hurting like nobody's business. The nurse then called us in ... BP checked , temperature taken a 100 questions asked before she looked at my toe and then she went..oooohhhh That must hurt. I smiled and said ...yes it does. She then went around to asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 0-10. Iam like okie....lets c ... a 6 ??? What is a 10 ...rolling around with eyes up in your socket hollering??? I dont know... So iam taken to the room where i am aksed to wait for the doctor and then the nurse leaves. The nail has started to look more doleful by the minute and the blood is congealing. So i know that they would have to rub off the congealed blood before they can do something about the wound. Inspiring thought?? We wait for another 45 mts and then we decided that my husband would go home with the baby , feed her and come back. So they left. I was in the room with another family whose son had twisted his ankle and they kept giving my toe sidelong glances and they kept goinbg"EUUUUUGGGGHJHHHHH" I smiled , nodded my head and said ..I know.... An hour later the doctor came in checked my nail and said she would have to decide whether she should sew the nail back on or pull it off and for that they would have to numb my toe . Before i could say OK,... she was gone. She came back after half an hour.. i got two numbing injections at the foot of my Great Toe... oh yes... it was very very very painful and then she said that it is going to take a while for the toe to get numb and she was gone again!!!! Another 45 mts , my husband returned having left the baby with our friend who lives in the same house and another round of "Euuuuughhh"ing and "That must hurt"ing and half hour later the doctor came back. She cleaned the wound again , and pulled the nail off and cut the loose skin off and said that someone will come along to dress the wound and almost flew. They had a busy day . The nurse came along after 15 minutes to dress up the wound and after all the after care instructions we finally left for home. After 4 hours. OOOOOHHHH BOY!!!!!!!

I see my little girl playing by herself
She comes running to me
To show me what she has found
Her little face is so bright in the joy of discovering
A little leaf that has turned red with the passing of summer
She smiles and happiness radiates through her eyes
Making me warm and cozy in the cold
The wind carries the sounds of her laughter
As she runs after the sparrows, in the lawn
She comes hopping back to me to show me what she can see
Just for a moment, I see what she can see
I see huge trees with leaves of different colours
I see small squirrels chasing each other with abandon
I see small berries that fall from the tree
I see sparrows trying to fly with these berries in their beaks
I see flowers ,tiny flowers, yellow, blue and red
Nestled among the grass, the grass so green
I walk in the grass and can feel the dew tickling my shin
Then I am back to my grown self
I realize how little it takes to keep a child happy
Just a smile and a romp in the park
And my girl is all smiles and her little heart is at peace.

A Trip Down Nostalgia Lane

love stationery shops. I always have. I remember that when I was in school , I used to love going to the stationery shops in Diba Fujeirah. That’s where I lived then. My father was a civil engineer working for the Sultanate of Oman. We were there for nearly ..hmmm… 8 years..so that’s like a second home to me .
As a civil engineer , my father’s assignments were more to do with the development of the community so it was always in a developing community that he was posted in. We were in a place called Bayah. I remember when I first first went there , I was 7 years old, and the roads were not laid yet …well not completely and Appa was given a Mazda “pick-up” van at work. When we were picked up at the airport by one of Appa’s friends, I asked him, why were going home in a “lorry” a common name for trucks. How my parents laughed!! I don’t remember too much about those first few months but that memory kind of stuck.
We had to travel to Diba Fujeirah for all our needs back then..groceries, vegetables..anything even STD phone calls. And I loved going there. My sister and I would sit in the back of the car…listening to my parents’ talk about what they need to do that day ,news about relatives back home , friends and I remember feeling really really secure and happy . We used to doze off on our way back home and Appa used to half carry ,half drag me(I was a very healthy 7 year old) into the house.
These trips have always held a certain amount of fascination for me..I don’t know why.. even as I grew up. My father would always take us to the stationery shop. The proprietor was a friend and used to spend around 20 minutes there. My sister would find something to read or she was content to listening to my father talk to Moosa Uncle. I can still see her.. holding Appa’s hand ,leaning on him and listening to them talk. Me…. I loved the shop.m I would spend the entire 20 minutes pottering around the shop trying all the pens and deciding which ones I liked the best . I loved…still do..the love of new paper .I used to touch all the notebooks and feel them and the people at the shop were really kind and they would just let me be.
In my 7th standard, I remember a friend of mine had a pencil case filled with pens. I used to love sitting with her and just look at all the pens and boy!!! Was there a collection. There was every kind of pen imaginable from the humble Reynolds to the Ubre Cool Pierre Cardin. I used to go gaga over these pens. She was a really nice person ,this friend of mine. Every time she got a new pen she would show it to me and let me try it. I used to have a lot of fun. She had pens with regular covers, pens that you would have to twist to open, slide to open , pens with different coloured tips …. I was totally fascinated. My parents were pretty much of a one pen at a time kind and we always got pretty regular pens you know. No complaints now....knowing my track record for losing stuff..i would have done the same thing in their place. However the first thing that I got for myself when I got my first salary was a Pierre Cardin pen.