Monday, March 17, 2008

The Boy Gets Sewn Up

We had our first trip to the Emergency Room with Jackson late yesterday afternoon. He was playing down in his sister's room when he sat down on a glass vase and cut his legs up. He had two small cuts on his left thigh, and two cuts on his right calf muscle. Three of the cuts were pretty minor, but one on the calf had carved up a small chunk of muscle, and kept oozing blood even after we put pressure on it for a while.

I wasn't sure if a clinic would do stitches, so we went ahead and took him to the ER at Summit. Fortunately, they weren't very busy and took him back pretty quickly and the doctor looked at it about 10 minutes after we got there. He decided that the cut would need some stitches plus they wanted to take a X-ray to make sure there was no glass in it.

The X-ray was not fun, since we had a hard time making him hold his leg still enough to take three shots. Then the nurse came in and put something on a cotton ball and taped it over the wound to deaden the area. After about 15 minutes, the doctor came in with an EMT that was helping out that day to do the stitches.

It turns out the cotton ball was just to lightly deaden the area so the doctor could inject more stuff to really deaden it up. Marissa was holding Jack's chest, I was holding his thighs, and the EMT was holding his feet. This part was just terrible. When the doctor stuck the needle in Jack started screaming at the top of his lungs and bucking all over the place. His face turned beet red and he kept saying "Daddy are! Daddy are! Daddy are!" Jack was crying, Marissa was crying, I was crying, and the EMT didn't look very happy either. The doctor, who looked to be in his late 50's, was completely unconcerned and put the three stitches in very quickly.

On the way home, we got Jack ice cream and potato chips, so he cheered up pretty quickly. We also got him some band-aids with the characters from Cars on it, so he was pretty happy about that and made Marissa put a few extra ones on him. Marissa and I were nervous wrecks the rest of the evening, and I don't think either of us slept very well.

6 comments:

Heff said...

If you keep giving the kid treats after accidents, he's sure to become a "cutter", not to mention a FAT one.

Anonymous said...

Glad to here that baby-child is ok.
This part about you crying; I'm a little concerned. You need to be tougher in front of the Boy. You don't want him to grow up to be a democrat.

BamaNana said...

Won't be the last of stitches.
Also, anonymous (too chicken to have a real name??) needs to keep his assisine comments in the chicken house. Crying when your own child, or someone else's child gets hurt doesn't mean that child grows up to be a democrat, or an assocrat like anonymous!
Means you have turned out to be a truly caring parent and I'm proud of both of you!!!

Anonymous said...

Aw man. This reminds me of my first trip to the ER. I'll put it up tomorrow. Glad the kid's aight. I've had my fair share of trips to the good ol' ER.

Tricia said...

SO sorry to hear of this traumatic experience. Do you remember Sam and Brian's bike wreck on the way to Disney? At least you didn't have to drag a 24' camper through town looking for an ER while hearing screaming....Sammy's!

Heff said...

It's my understanding that crying in front of your children means they'll grow up to be Banana Tree Theives, but that could just be a vicious rumor.