When Your World Stops.

It's a beautiful sunny day.  You're cooped up in the office.  An email arrives, and well if you're in IT your typical first response is to check it out.

"This message is to advise that today at approx. 3:00 p.m. there was a minor incident involving the school bus # 16 in which your child was a passenger.  All students were triaged at the scene by local ambulance attendants as per district protocol and taken to school (or continued home).  Should you have any concerns, please take your child to see your family doctor or local area emergency room.  Also, it could be that someone from our insurance provider will be in touch with you over the next several days."

My world stopped.

Breathe.

First instinct: locate child.  However you'll notice in this message that he was either brought back to school or continued home.  Well depending on the route taken that is between 11.8 and 14.4 km.  I called home, no answer, called again, no answer, called the school, busy, called the school again, busy.  Seeing as I work on the next block I walked over to the school to see if they were there calling home the entire walk...'no mam, they were taken home'. Well I just thought I'd check as I was leaving the downtown core in the next 15 minutes. 

I finally got ahold of Alex while I was cutting through the graveyard back to the office.  Momentary relief.  However I asked him a couple of questions. 
-Are you ok?
-Yeah kind of, I hit my head and it hurts. 
-What did the paramedic say?
-Well we were told everything was all right and they asked if anyone was hurt
-Did you think to mention you hit your head?
-Well there wasn't any blood...
-How is it?
-It doesn't feel bad on the outside but hurts on the inside
-Are you sleepy?
-Yeah, I almost fell asleep on the bus
*blood pressure going through the roof*
-What?  How is your stomach?
-I thought I was going to be sick but I didn't.  It feels better now.
-Ok, well do something to stay awake, I'll be home as soon as I can

L-O-N-G-E-S-T C-A-R D-R-I-V-E E-V-E-R

So I've come to learn that the term triage is used very loosely by the district and I've since filed an inquiry/complaint.  I would have picked my son up and rushed him immediately to his family doctor before her office closed.  As it stands they wasted about 1.5-2 hours of our time dealing with a potential closed head injury.  I called our 811 service to get some advice and off we went

Thankfully as the evening went on he improved and today is no worse for the wear.  However I think I may have incurred a new gray hair or two!