I also have no idea what an ER looks like. I envison a lot of plastic chairs.
I did have to have 10 baby teeth taken out at age 10 because they weren’t coming out on their own and were halting my orthodontic progress. I was in bed for the afternoon and up after that. Contrast my wisdom teeth a few years later, where I was in bed for a week.
-Pneunomia. Very bad. Nearly died. I don’t remember much except laying in the back of the station wagon going very fast on the way to the E.R… Next thing I knew I was under an oxygen tent. I played my first video game at the hospital (asteroid) and found it hard to play with the star wars toys they had with my I.V.
-I was playing a game called “Jaywalking” before school. If you’re not familiar, it’s when you walk between kids as they swing on the swing. The version we played was more aggressive. You threw the swing at the kid as he ran past. 
Anyway, after the game I bent over to pick up my school stuff off the ground and took a swing chain right above my left eye. I think eight stitches.
-Riding my bike down the local “dead mans hill.” Hit a patch of loose dirt at the bottom and flipped quite a few times. I scraped the holy hell out of my body (was wearing shorts and a tank top at the time). Took a piece out of my chin and had eleven stitches, eight external and three internal. Completely changed my profile
The funny thing about the hill accident is that not more than a week before hand, I was barreling down the hill when a bug flew into my eye. Rode down one handed with my eyes closed perfectly fine. :rolleyes:
Mom used to take fresh water in Miracle Whip jars when we went to the beach so she could clean off our feet before we got inside the car. I was about four when she dropped one, cutting my ankle and her leg. She told my ten year old sister to go to some people down the beach and ask for help. Sis refused because she wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers. Eventually, we got to the a doctor, but I’m not sure if at was an ER since we were several floors up in the hospital. I remember that they finally got me to stop screaming by pointing out the ships down in the ship channel.
I was dragged by a horsewhen I was seven. The horse kicked me in the ribs, so they kept me a few days for observation.
Also, my sister dropped a sewer grate on my thumb when I was about ten, cracking a bone. I was reaching into the drain to get the dime we dropped so we could call Dad to pick us up from the pool.
Everything else that happened to me happened after that.
I’m guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-12 visits. Here’s the ones I remember:
Fell off a tractor: 7 stitches in my left cheek, 2 in my left eyebrow.
Fell onto the back of a radiator in the toyroom: 3 stitches in the back of my head.
Fell onto the back of (the same) radiator in the toyroom (about 2 weeks after having the stitches removed for the first radiator incident): 2 stitches in the back of my head.
Fell on my face in 1st grade P.E. trying to jump rope: possible concussion.
Broke my arm at recess in 5th grade, playing touch football. (Ironically, we had just been yelled at not 10 minutes earlier by a teacher for playing tackle football, because “Somebody’s gonna get hurt playing tackle football”). Got to stay in the hospital overnight on that one, as my arm had swelled up so much by the time they got me to the ER that they couldn’t set it right away.
I also remember a few trips to the ER for ear infections and/or strep throat in the first 6-8 years of my life. It seems that I was unable to tell anyone about these illnesses until about 10 p.m. on any given day.
Interesting. My wife always seems to decide the Little Lagomorph HAS to go to the doctor after 5 pm on Sunday…
Hmm- Nobody OD’ed on baby aspirin? There is a reason medicines now have child-proof caps. I was taken to the ER about age 2 [and so was my brother at about the same age] after eating most of a bottle of deliscous orange-flavored St Joseph’s baby aspirin.
I remember quite clearly getting 2 stitches in the lip at the age of 4. I was kneeling in front of my mother who was holding my 3-month old sister. I lost my balance and landed mouth first right on the corner of the coffee table.
My sister somehow got a bead stuck up her nose at the age of 3 or 4.
Heck, I practically grew up in an ER. Partly because of my own few accidents, but more because of my little sister’s accidents, on top of the fact that my father was a resident at the hospital, so my mother didn’t hesitate to take us there if she thought we needed it.
I should also add that for some of these, I’m not 100% sure who was injured. My sister and I are only a year apart, so we practically grew up as twins.
Let’s see…
When I was about a year old, I fell and broke a front tooth. No root damage, so I kept the cracked tooth until it fell out naturally.
When I was between the ages of four and five (and not necessarily in this order):
My sister stuck a bobbie pin in an electric outlet. She was “smart” enough to put one end in each slot, so she just burned her thumb rather than electrocuting herself.
My sister got her hand closed in the car door, with the door closed so far it had be opened with the handle. Bruises only.
My sister got her hand closed in the front door of our house, with the door closed so far it had to be opened with the door knob. Sprained her hand.
My sister and I were taking a bath together when our mother walked in to tell us it was time to get out. There was water all over the floor, and she slipped. Her arm hit a can of Silly Foam (bath soap that squirted out like whipped cream). The can hit my sister in her forehead, and it needed three stitches.
My sister fell against the hearth and knocked herself unconscious. I apparently went and told my mother that she was dead in the play room.
One of us (me I think) fell off the top bunk bed and landed head first. Brief unconsciousness, and a bruise, but nothing worse.
All of this was in a single year, and all visits were to the same ER. My mother says she never did understand why she was never reported for possible child abuse.
After that year, we moved to another city, but the accidents still happened. My sister and I went to visit our grandparents in a different state. Sister fell on some rocks, and needed stitches in her hand.
While walking to school together one morning, sister fell and her hand landed on a broken bottle. We had to turn around and take her home, so Mom could take her to the ER. (I had to go to school that time, though.)
On another trip to grandparents’ house, I ran through a sliding glass door. (I SWEAR to this day I saw cigarette smoke drifting through the door as I approached!). Seven stitches in my knee (which hit the glass first apparently), and additional stitches in two fingers. (In one fell swoop, I managed to get more stitches than the total number of stitches my sister had ever had!!!)
After moving into a house near a small wooded area, the neighborhood kids introduced us to wild blackberries that grew pretty much in our backyard. My mother insists that the only safe food comes from grocery stores, so she packed sis and me into the car with a sample of the berries, and went to the ER to confirm that they were indeed edible.
I fell extremely ill (very high fever and very stiff) one weekend, so my mother rushed me to the ER thinking I had meningitis. When they swabbed me to do a spinal tap, I broke out in chicken pox. They kept me in the hospital overnight just to make sure that it really was only chicken pox, and every pediatric resident in the city must have come through my room to get a first-hand look at chicken pox.
While I was at summer camp, I managed to hit my eye with a rubber nose-stopper (used for swimming). The camp nurse just put a patch on it. When my parents picked me up two days later on the last day of camp, they took one look at my eye, then threw me, my sister, and all our gear in the car and drove straight to the ER. The iris was torn, and the eye was very infected. I spent the next three days in the hospital with both eyes patched, and came very close to losing at least one eye.
I got so comfortable with ER’s and hospitals that I actually spent a couple of summers as a volunteer when I was in high school. I didn’t like it well enough to make a living there, though. 
Never.
The most that happened was that I abruptly developed strabismus at age 18 months, but I don’t think they took me to the ER for that.
Most of mine have been since age 10, but I remember a couple before.
At age 5 I had an allergic reaction to penicillin.
At age 10 I ruptured my liver on a bicycle handlebar (there were additional injuries, but that was the main event).
A couple of other hospital stays before 10, but those are the only ER visits I recall.
Racked up quite a few since then, including yesterday, when I had a head x-ray series for a possible skull fracture. Besides a really evil looking facial contusion (hmmm, what’ll I tell’em at work tomorrow?), it seems I’m OK.
But I do have a head injury patient checklist, and I’m supposed to notify them tomorrow if, amongst other things, my behavior has changed.
Has my behavior changed?
Quit lookin’ at me like that!
I never did need an ER before the age of 18, when I cut my finger at work badly enough to need stitches.
I’ve only had to take a child to the ER once. When she was four, my older daughter fell out of bed while we were on vacation, and I didn’t realize she had a broken collarbone until the middle of the next day, a Sunday. I didn’t realize something was seriously wrong until she refused to go swimming because it hurt when her swim ring started to float and lifted her arms. I’ve also had to take her to the doctor’s office quickly twice - once when she chopped into her toe with a hoe (ow, ow, ow) and once just last spring, when she scratched her cornea (she was aiming for her nose and missed).
You gotta understand that my parents are both doctors so my brothers and sisters and I had to be either bleeding internally or vomitting much in the way of Linda Blair in the Exorcist before we got to go to the ER. That said, I had my fair share.
I had some sort of evil obsession with this playground equipment at school. It was a jungle gym kinda thing shaped like a rainbow cleverly known as “The Rainbow” I ran into that thing headfirst at least twice and possible three times. Still I’m not sure if I went into the ER for those or if my parents just hauled me into the Plastic Surgeon’s office. Either way, I know Dr. Stevenson was getting sick of my forehead.
Then, of course, I have Hydrocephalus. First shunt installed when I was ten months old so I have no memory of that. It broke when I was seven, again when I was ten and so on. But hey, it’s been 11 years, knock on wood.
I think that’s all I had, before age ten anyway. Since then I’ve been racking them up in much the same fashion.
-Lil
Only one trip for me. We had a big upholsterd rocker in the living room, and at age 5 I liked to sort of do a headstand on it…my head on the seat, and my legs up and over the back. Then I would rock back and forth. Of course, it overbalanced one day and I flew across the room, where I hit my head on the bottom of a wooden chair (ironically, a child’s rocker I was supposed to be sitting in). I have a few vivid memories of a dishtowel over my head and laying down in the back seat of a car, and laying on a cold steel table for the xrays. I think I must have lost consciousness after I hit the rocker, because my mom was not the type to bother the hospital with a bump. And my mom didn’t drive, so either this happened when My dad was home, or a neighbor drove us, because I don’t remember an ambulance.
The only other hospital trip for me was a tonsillectomy at 9, but no ER involved. But it was the first time I’d heard the term “bowel movement” , and since the question was asked by a foreign doctor with a thick accent of a very sick little girl, I was totally confused.
Only one, ever. Age 10. I was playing Wiffle Ball with some friends on a Saturday night, pitching to a guy about eight feet away who was using the big red Wiffle Ball bat. (You know the one I mean.)
The guy really got hold of one of my pitches, hitting a line drive that would have gone straight past the empty beer carton that was second base and practically out of sight, had my head not been in the way. In particular, my eye was in the way. The ball got to me so fast that I didn’t even have time to blink.
I don’t remember exactly what it was about this that made my parents take me to the ER–which was no mean feat, as it was an hour’s drive away. From that one, I was sent forty minutes on to Lexington where they had an ophthalmologist on call. Apparently I had quite a bit of hemmorhage inside the eyeball. I had to wear a jacked-up metal eyepatch and keep my head level for two weeks. I was out of school for all but the last few days of that, and I was excited because we rented a VCR. The people at the video place heard about my injury and let us keep it all week. (Small towns, baby!)
Since then, I’ve spent more hours in emergency rooms than I care to think about, but never as a patient.
I only remember three, but I’m almost positive there aren’t anymore before age 10.
When I was 7, my parents took me to the ER for an extremely high temperature (105°F or so). I was admitted and held hostage for more than 4 weeks with pneumonia. In addition to that, I missed most of first grade (but passed anyway, thanks to my teacher coming to my house everyday after school); the dowside being I couldn’t play outside all winter, either. 
Sometime after that, I was rushing downstairs to help my sister frost her birthday cake when I caught my thumb on the edge of a wooden railing. My dad tried to pull the splinter (under the nail, more than half an inch long and embedded all the way to the cuticle, and about an eighth of an inch wide) out with a tweezer, but it broke off. Six shots of novacaine, and one Safe-T-Pop later, I was released.
Sometime after that, I was playing by a church on a railing that overlooked the highway when I fell off and landed on a curb, “crushing” (I didn’t, but it hurt like a bitch) my tailbone. I didn’t move for a good twenty minutes and I had to walk the three blocks back home hunched over because it hurt too much to stand upright. My mom took me to the ER, but after waiting around so long I decided we could just go back home.
I was 7 and a bunch of us were playing on the teeter-totter in the park. Only we weren’t riding on it, we were pretending that somebody’s dog was a monster and we were crawling on the boards to stay away from it. You know what happens when you crawl up past the halfway point on the teeter-totter? You fall down and break your arm. I don’t remember any pain, but it looked like I had a second wrist, about two inches above the real one. First stop, the doctor’s office (even though it was after hours he met us there) where he put it in a small splint. Second stop, home for me to change my dirty shirt and clean up a little (that’s my mom for ya). And third stop, the ER, where we waited for a long time and then they took me to the OR and set the arm. They kept me overnight, since by then it was so late and they had given me general anesthesia.
My other trip to the ER doesn’t really count, since I wasn’t hurt, but the rest of the family was, in a really bad car accident. I had to sit in with my dad until somebody came for me, and then I got to correct him when he tried to give the state policemen the wrong information about all of us. He was getting the ages mixed up, so I told them the right ones. I was 4.
When I tried to kill a wasp on the window and cut my hand open, the GP took care of it in his office. Ditto for the multitude of childhood accidents.
First visit was ~18yo- an automobile accident, 7 way jaw fracture. Dad came to the ER, took my hand and cried.
A few years later, I crushed two fingers with the help of a home center guy who dropped a sheet of 3/4" particle board on my hand. Nearby was the hospital where I had worked, and I’ll never forget the facial change of the charge nurse. Kathy went from “Hey, look who’s here” to “O God, you’re hurt” in a flash.
Most recent was my mountain bike wreck: quad jaw fracture, skull fracture, compression fracture of C5,6,7,T6,7,8, fracture of right tibia/fibula, lung collapse, and general beating up of the body. I don’t remember the ER part-I checked out in the helo after the good drugs were administered.
Never been to the ER, closest was when i broke my finger when someone punted a football into my finger from about 10 cm away.
I had two ER visits before age 10 (the second one by just one day):
The first one I don’t even remember as I was only two years old at the time. I had trouble breathing for some reason and my parents had to rush me in to the hospital. I don’t remember what my parents said was the cause, but it never happened again.
The secone incident, which I do remember, came on the night before my 10th birthday. I stepped on a toothpick and it went straight into the underside of my foot. The toothpick was standing upright and held in place by the carpet. It was very painful. I was watching the closing ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York and going to bed when it happened.
I’ve managed to live 42 years without ever being an ER patient. Hope it stays that way for a little longer (now watch, I’ll get hit by a bus on the way home …).
When I used to work in a hospital though, I’d visit the ER at least once a shift, so that was enough for me to know it’s a good place to avoid.
Hmm. This poll is a little unfair to me, as by chance all the major accidents I had as a child happened in India, even though I didn’t live there the whole time.
Age 2: Came down violently sick with malaria. Tey took me to a doctor, but I was in India and my family was very poor.
Age 3: Fell off of a brick wall that I decided to climb. Same thing.
Emigrated to the States, went back to visit at age 10.
Age 10: Riding on a motorcycle with my auntie, we were coming around a roundabout, and somehow my foot slipped. The motorcycle’s foot thing (where the passenger puts their foot) was not protected, and my foot slipped into/against the tire. Luckily it was my heel, but we stopped in the middle of the roundabout with blood pouring everywhere and me bawling at the top of my lungs. Some guy with his wife stopped, and took me in their car to a doctor to get stitched while my auntie followed close behind on her motorcycle.
I only visited an E.R. once, when I was 15 and badly burned my forearm.