Nailed it! #2

Yesterday the story that began with stepping on a nail left off with a short drive over to the hospital. When I say short, I mean really short, it's less than a mile away. We could have walked if the whole reason for our visit in the first place wasn't foot pain. It was, we drove, and we made it.
This hospital, like many, is confusing. I suspect that they do this on purpose, but I'm still not exactly sure what that purpose it. Perhaps it's to keep people from escaping? I don't really know, but unsurprisingly I couldn't figure out where to go. When I left the pediatrician's office I was sent with a note basically giving me a prescription to head right to the children's ward to meet with the doctor that already knew we were coming. Not being able to figure out where to go, I asked a nice person who sent me to admissions. Ok, I can dig it, my son needs to be admitted, so off I head to admissions.
I showed my handy dandy get into the hospital free card to admissions and was met with a scowl. The owner of the scowl made a few calls and then sent me to a cheerier person to show my insurance and ID and such. This person received a call that instructed her to send us to emergency. For some reason that's how they wanted to admit us. I put my non ambulatory son on my back and headed to emergency, the one part of the hospital I could find. At emergency I showed my paper to yet another person and explained that I was sent over to go the the children's ward but couldn't find it and I had been sent from admissions to them. They assured me that I was in the right place and that they were the real ones that knew whether there were beds available. Ok, sure. We wait. More paperwork. Triage by a nurse to confirm that he did indeed have a puffy foot with a hole in the bottom. More waiting. A doctor to confirm what the nurse confirmed. More waiting. A nice trip to radiology for a series of x-rays. More waiting. Finally sent back to the back of the emergency area to......wait. After about the third very nice nurse asked us why we were there some phone calls were made and things started to happen. As it turns out, a doctor had been waiting for slightly over four hours in the children's ward for us and she was worried and annoyed. Things started to happen.
A big slightly scary bald guy came and got us next. We had seen him walking around the emergency area and I was starting to wonder if he hadn't been hired as a bouncer. He was wearing scrubs, but he looked far more likely to be the type of guy to put you in an ambulance than take you out of one. He was the nurse assigned to put an IV in my son's arm. If you have a five year old, take a look at their arm. It's skinny. Really skinny. Now imagine that you have to find the tiny little vein in that arm and get an IV in there and do it in such a way that they don't freak out so much that they jerk their arm and undo everything you're trying to do. I did not envy the job of this man, but he was awesome. He talked to my son and calmed him down and drew a little snake head on the elastic tourniquet. I hugged him (my son, not the nurse) and held his arm and witnessed the best IV stab I've ever seen. In, out, taped up and two vials of blood drawn before I could even explain what had happened, which is pretty good because there's no real way to explain to a five year old what's going on in a way they understand. A big scary guy wants to stab you, but only a little bit, and take out some of your blood, but only a little but, and then leave a plastic tube taped to your arm.
It was done, the IV was in and we were almost instantly in a wheel chair and off the the children's ward to get settled down for our next three days of sitting. Except before we could sit, we had to head back out for an MRI.  This is where I'll leave the story for today, a small boy with a big foot on a moving table being slid into a room sized magnetic doughnut.