I Do Not Like Podiatrists

So yesterday I had to leave my desk at 2pm to go pick up Ben and take him to the podiatrist to get an in-grown toenail taken care of. He had finished a 10 day course of Keflex to take care of the infection, but the nail was still in-grown so we needed to get it fixed so it wouldn't get infected again.

Our appointment was at 3pm and we sat in the exam room until at least 3:30 before the podiatrist even made an appearance. Ben was of course apprehensive about what was going to be done to his toe, and the podiatrist explained that he would numb Ben's toe so he would not feel him taking part of the toenail off. Ben seemed happy with this until he asked, "How are you going to numb my toe?" Of course the answer was that he would need to get a shot, at which point Ben started crying and freaking out. Then the podiatrist said, "I'll let you think about it for awhile and I'll come back in a bit."

Then he promptly got up and left for another 30 minutes (thanks dude) while I tried to console Ben and tell him it wouldn't be that bad, promised him Madden 13 if he was good about it, etc.  And Ben grabbed my phone and started Googling ways to numb a toe without a shot, how to get a shot without having it hurt, etc etc, in a desperate attempt to find some other way to do this.

Finally the podiatrist came back in (by this time it was 4:15 or so and I was getting rather annoyed), and proceeded to numb Ben's toe, which didn't turn out to be all that bad because he used some cold spray stuff and Ben said it only hurt in one spot. It did take quite a while with the needle to get his toe completely numb though. Then we were alone for another 10 minutes, waiting for that to take full effect, and then a 5 minute session with some pliers and Ben was all set, with a toe wrapped up in red vet tape. Ben was very happy by the time it was over and announced that it was not all that bad. I had a different opinion, considering we left the office over two hours after we'd arrived, and needed to hustle across town to pick up Caroline and Rebecca.

I took the kids to Noodles & Co for dinner, since Joel was heading to the gym after work and I'd not been home all afternoon to think about fixing dinner, and then we went next door to Game Stop for the promised Madden 13. Of course, they did not have it for Wii, so we had to go over to Wal-Mart for it. By the time we got home it was 7pm and Ben still had to do homework and unwrap/soak his toe, and Caroline was about to fall apart from exhaustion.