ER Visit

In all our years of parenting we've only had one visit to the ER, when Ally was a baby. And now... in just one month... we've had two more. First, Gracie's finger and stitches, now - Daniel hurt his arm. He was playing basketball with the teenagers after church and fell onto his elbow. It seems to be kind of sprained and possibly cracked. So, apparently, kid's x-rays are difficult because they have growth plates, so it is hard to tell if it is a crack or a growth plate. After a week, if it is a crack we should see thickening at the crack and it will show up on the x-ray.
The whole experience and resulting education kinda taught me that there's not a ton doctors DO when it comes to a break. Basically, they plaster it up to immobilize it, but there's not much to it. The cast is pretty simple and it's just about immobilizing, I mean they sell that fiberglass casting material at Michael's. I'm not saying next time we'll avoid the doctor, or I'll make my own plaster cast or anything. It just seems kind of ridiculous what you pay to have doctors do. We had a friend take Gracie's stitches out and it was a pretty simple thing. Her ER visit - with good insurance was around $700 - who knows what Daniel's will be. We need ER's - I'd use an ER again, but they can't tell you much; they just stop the bleeding or bandage you up until you can get to a real doctor.
And...if you are basically educated and have the guts to trust yourself, you can probably take care of things just as well as a $2000 doctor visit. But I know I won't. We don't because we question ourselves, we feel guilty and we worry, we wonder if there might be something we are missing that those years of medical school taught them. And after all, when we are dealing with our kids we don't want to take chances. I just hate that feeling of holding that bill and thinking, "I paid all THIS for THAT? Duh. I knew that already, or I could've done that myself."