Saturday, January 26, 2008

Yes, of course, I got pictures so I can scrapbook this event!


I spent my afternoon of free time in the local ER w/DD2. It was one of those stupid accidents, are there any other kind? We were walking DD1 to a neighbor’s house to play & in their driveway she tripped and fell. (You should see the driveway!) Not sure if she actually tripped on something or not, she’s 20 MO they fall a lot, you know. She turned her head just right so that she landed face first and used her eyebrow to catch herself. Her eyebrow was less then pleased. I was initially relieved that she didn’t knock out a tooth. She had obviously given herself a good knot on her head and after cleaning her up (quite a bleeder) we went home where I made her lunch. She seemed fine, was quite happy & joking around in fact. But the damn cut wouldn’t stop bleeding. It wasn’t gushing or anything, just every couple minutes I’d have to press it w/a cloth so the blood wasn’t dripping into her eye. Your welcome, eating breakfast were you? You should know better than to do that while reading my stuff by now. Once an hour had passed & it was still bleeding I decided to call the advice nurse; I knew it was more likely than not that they’d tell me to come in, but I also thought there was decent chance they’d say they don’t butterfly a child at that age or something and as long as she was acting fine then she was fine. Of course I told me to come in. In fact I was directed NOT to got to urgent care, but to go to ER. Great.
Luckily the hospital was relatively slow when we got there. We did end up having to wait for an hour and a half in the beginning (I think we got screwed in a receptionist shift change) but once I decided to allow DD1 carte blanch at the waiting room they got us in right away. Yes, I was that mother. In my defense I had pretty much run out of tricks to keep her entertained and seated after an hour an a half. Whatever, it worked. We didn’t even see a doctor. The nurse practitioner took one look & said stitches for sure.



Me: “Really? Can’t you glue it? It’s so small.”
Nurse: If it were anywhere else we probably would glue it, but by the eye we don’t use the glue. Plus being right at the beginning of her eyebrow we’d be messing w/the hairs & it’s really best left alone.
Me: So you’re basically going to give her a shot in her eye, right? (I'm thinking of the therapy this is going to cost me later in life.)
Nurse: We’ll numb it first, and we’ll strap her down to a papoose board.
Me: Trust me the board will be the worst part of it. She can’t stand to be confined. I can’t overstate how much she hates to be strapped down.
Nurse: That’s typically it’ll be fine.
So they put some gel on the cut to numb it, and in the end didn’t do a shot, only the gel. She ended up with two stitches. It was big enough for three, but the nurse decided the other two pulled it together well enough and a third is just that much more opportunity for scarring. Here's the real kicker; she didn’t cry. Yes, you read correctly. Remember I mentioned before that she doesn’t cry at shots (neither of my kids do), well she didn’t cry at this either. In fact, I spun the situation so well with her (yes, I am taking the credit for this thankyouverymuch) that she was cooing through the whole thing at me & the 2nd nurse who was holding her head still. No shite! I swear! I honestly wish I’d had a video of the thing because it was amazing. When we left, the nurses were in the back telling all the others about it because they’d never had a kid be not just so calm, but actually happy during something like that. I made a big deal out of the fact that she was getting to lay on a big girl bed (the ER beds) and she ate that up. Then they brought the board in and she was interested in what was going on, so they told her they were going to wrap her up w/blankies so she would stay warm. When they started, one of the nurses said something about becoming a baby burrito and I told her they were going to wrap her up like we do Baby S & Baby G, my friend’s twins. I told her we were going to pretend she was a baby. Well let me tell you, she lurved that!!! (She loves babies.) She cooed through the rest of the procedure. As they stitched her eye I stroked her face & told her how proud I was of her & what a big, brave girl she was, just like DD1. I couldn’t have said anything better, she was thrilled with herself. I have a feeling this is the first of many of these types of ER visits in her future. I hope I’m wrong, but I told DaddySpeak “I think this is our hockey player.”

2 comments:

thethinker said...

Wow, she's brave. I'm a wimp when it comes to things like that. I definitely would have cried.

mama speak said...

I always try to make the dr. a upbeat experience. Ever since I was little I've had more than my share of dr. visits, I don't want my kids to have a negative association with them. It probably helps that my FIL is a surgeon; dr. suddenly not so scary.