my son sacrificed his eyeball to afford me some mother-son time

My 15 year old, Bo has something wrong with his eye. I figured this out when he put his contact in his right eye, proceeded to clutch his eye socket, drop to his knees, and hurl words through the air that we have told him not to say. I know. I'm pretty intuitive. It's probably my strongest motherly trait.

Anyway, I thought he might need to see an opthamologist. Here's the problem. We don't have an opthamologist in the city yet.

So I looked up our insurance on line and found a doctor (tired of spelling opthamologist) close to our side of town. I called, explained the situation and they told me they had an opening. IN SEPTEMBER. I'm pretty sure his eyeball could fall out by then. Plus grandparents are visiting soon and they're not really fans of the whole "hurling words through the air that we have told him not to say". They're from Oklahoma.

We needed more of an immediate plan.

So I did some research and noticed there was a walk-in eye clinic downtown. Bo and I headed down there after lunch. Fast forward 4 1/2 hours of our lives that we will never get back and we were STILL THERE. Turns out "walk-in eye clinic" is code for "we'll take anyone who doesn't have insurance, doesn't have a regular doctor, or is just lonely and wants some one-on-one time."

Picture the worst DMV experience you've ever had and multiply that by a gazillion. I won't bore you with all the details, but I will add a fun fact. It was my second day of my new No sugar, No carb diet. To assume that I wanted to start climbing the walls using only my fingernails would be accurate assumption.

And Bo, well at one point Bo said, "Don't they know I am a 15 year old teenage boy, testosterone raging through my body, and I might go postal any minute?" Yes, they know that, but they really don't care. This is New York. It takes a lot more than that to scare people.

We were trapped in a waiting room with about 150 other people called Area A. If we left, we could lose our place in line. But because Bo is growing boy, he needs to eat every 15 seconds. He tried posting to his facebook status that food was needed. Unfortunately none of his friends were able to come to his rescue. Either that or they knew that Area A was the pit of hell and should be avoided at all costs.

We finally saw the doctor right before our bodies started to decompose from waiting for so long. Actually we saw 2 doctors who gave us 2 different diagnosis. A whole other story. But we picked the diagnosis we liked the best. Bo has a scratch on his eye and was in need of some antibiotic drops.

Even though it was a long afternoon. It was not a total loss to me:

Cost of transportation to and from eye clinic: $20
Cost of antibiotic drops: $100
Finally being able to spend 1 on 1 time with my 15 year old even if it was Area A: priceless