Your First Traumatic Experience - ER Visit No. 1

It was around 5pm on Thursday, January 25th.  Probably the worst day of mine and daddy's life.  No lie.

We were doing what we usually do.....playing upstairs in the playroom.  This day, you had been playing with your trains on your train table, and I was brainstorming about a new project on my craft table across the room and watching you play.

Before I keep going with the story, let me first explain your growing personality/demeanor/boy-ness.   You are VERY much a boy.  You are a rough and tumble kinda boy, which has earned you the nickname Brutus around these parts.  There's not much that hurts you.  And you've become a little too rambunctious at times, but we let you be that as long as you are in no imminent danger.  Lately you have discovered that standing up on your blue Boston chair and then leaning and falling with it while to the floor and landing on your hands is your favorite thing to do.  Sometimes, you do this over and over and over.  No exaggeration.  You will fall onto the ground, get up and say, "I'm okay!"  And then do it again and again.

One more thing to note.....a few weeks ago, we moved your teepee into the playroom.  We placed it in the far back corner.  That corner has an air conditioning chase going through it that its boxed off with sheet rock so that it looks like an actual wall-corner.  So instead of that corner being an inside corner, it comes out and makes an outside corner.  On the day of this story, your teepee was backed all the way up to this corner.  Turns out....BIG MISTAKE.

Back to the story.  We were upstairs, and everything was going like normal.  At some point you had run into your room.  Within seconds, you came running out like you were on a mission.  You came running across the playroom headed straight toward your teepee.  I remember watching you the whole way with a smile on your face running at full speed.  These few seconds felt like they were hours.  I noticed that you were going really fast toward your teepee, but I didn't really think anything about it because I knew (thought) you had it under control and knew what you were doing.

It looked like you meant to dive-bomb into your pillows in the back of your teepee, but instead you went a little too far and high, and rammed your forehead right into the corner of the wall.  The corner of the wall that comes out into a box, i.e., a sharp corner.  As I watched this I kept thinking to myself, "Oh no he's about to hit the wooden pole thats holding up the teepee!!!!"  It all literally felt like it was in slow motion.  But as soon as I heard the horrible bang and saw how far you had gone back inside the teepee I knew right then what you had hit.

You immediately buried your head into the pillows and within seconds I rushed over to you (which felt like I was in a dream) and quickly turned you over.   That's when you started crying.  As I turned you over, blood immediately started pouring down your face.  Your face was completely covered in blood.  Hands down, this was the most horrible sight I've ever seen.  I rushed you to the closest bathroom upstairs, and the whole time I was saying to you, "you're okay, you're okay, it's okay" with blood dripping on the carpet the whole way.  I tried washing some of the blood off your face so I could see where the injury was and what it looked like.  With all the blood constantly coming out I couldn't determine exactly where it was, so I grabbed the closest thing, toilet paper, wet it and tried to wipe some blood off and stop the bleeding.  I knew I needed to get downstairs to my phone but didn't want to trail blood all the way down onto the carpet.  Thankfully, the toilet paper held up.

We got downstairs, I laid you down on a blanket on the floor and told you not to move.  By this point, you had stopped crying and were asking for some milk.  I got you milk.  My main concern at that point was to stop the bleeding so I grabbed lots of wet paper towels and tried applying pressure over the wound.  And it worked.  It stopped gushing out and it was now just slowly oozing out, and I was able to take a good look at what the injury looked like and where it was located.

Once you were settled, laying there drinking your milk, I grabbed my phone but had no clue whom to call.  Do I call 911, do I call Jer first or do I call your doctor?  I called Jer to let him know, and then I called your doctor.  The nurse called me back and said that since the cut was longer than a quarter of an inch on the face their guidelines say to go to the emergency room.  So that's what we did.

Shortly after we arrived, dada met us there with your stroller since mama had rushed out the door with out any socks and shoes for you.  We sat you in your stroller, and within 5 minutes we were called back.



When we got into our ER room, we waited to see the doctor.  You were already into the Little Einsteins show that we had playing for you on the iPad.  Within minutes, a physician's assistant came in to assess the situation.  He grabbed some gauze out of the drawer, wet it with some antibacterial water and started scrubbing your wound!!  I could see the wound opening and closing as he scrubbed and scrubbed the dried blood off as it oozed fresh blood.  I have to admit, I couldn't watch that part.  I was truly giving me the ebee-geebee's.  It looked like it hurt like H-E-double hockey sticks.

Here it is all cleaned up.

But, Mr. Boston didn't make a peep.  Not a sound.  Didn't even look up at the PA.  You were totally focused on that little rocket ship on your show.  I couldn't believe it.  It was like that wound had no feeling or something.  I started to wonder if you were some bionic child or something.

Once he cleaned it all up he told us our options.  Stitches or dermabond (glue).  We chose the dermabond.  We didn't want you to go through the whole getting poked with a needle for numbness, and then having to get the stitches put in, and then having to come back in a week to get them taken out.  So the dermabond was a no-brainer.  Thankfully, your cut was in a straight line and not jagged or curved.  Otherwise, you would have had to have gotten stitches.

We were also ever so blessed that you didn't have any concussion-type symptoms.  If you had, they would have needed to do a CT scan of your brain, which produces radiation, and children your age tend to "soak" in more radiation than adults.  This is never a good thing at a young age.  It's never good to be exposed to that much radiation so young.  #thankyouJesusforsavinghimfromthis

After getting our decision about the dermabond, the PA left for a good 20 minutes or so, and then came back in with his nurse and the glue.  They put a bright light on your forehead, and then the nurse held your would closed shut while the PA started gluing.  They said it would feel a little hot (kinda sting) while they applied it 3 times with 30 seconds drying time between each application.  The application process looked like it hurt, because the PA would take the glue pen and firmly press and smear it back and forth across the wound.

After the second coat, the nurse sweetly said, "wow, I wish all kids were this easy."  Why?  That's because you hadn't even paid any attention to what was going on.  You hadn't made a sound or even looked up.  You were solely concentrating on your show.  Seriously, is this really happening?  Is all I kept thinking.  Daddy and I were looking at each other in amazement.  We knew you were tough, but didn't know you could handle something like that with such ease.  We were beyond proud of you, and thankful that you appeared to be out of pain.


After they were done and as they were starting to walk out.....daddy said, "Boston, say thank you."  And you looked up and politely and quietly said, "Thank you," and immediately looked back down to watch your movie.

Finally peeled his eyes off his show.

Wow and wow.  You seriously are amazing in your mommy and daddy's eyes.  We were thrilled that we didn't have to go through the whole holding your hands and legs down while you screamed bloody murder so they could clean your wound and then apply your glue.  I couldn't have imagined having to do that to you.

So....thank you.  We thank you for being so awesome and so tough during that extremely hard experience for mommy and daddy (apparently not to you, though).  You bring such peace and calmness to everything.  And we are so very thankful for that.

It's been a little over a month and you have healed up so well.  The scar (which has been momma's biggest struggle) is a little red still but with lots of vitamin E and massaging we are hopeful that it will eventually fade away as you get older, or even move up into your hairline where you'll never be able to really see it.  Plus, with all of your hair you can't even see it most of the time anyway... another advantage to the long hair thing... ha.

Here it is about 5 days after.  We were so proud of you for not trying to peel off the glue.  We don't even think you knew it was there.  By the 10th day the glue was mostly all peeled off.  

For kicks and for our memory, here's what it looks like as of today March 8, 2013:

Oh, and we have decided that you get the Trooper of the Year Award.  :)

Here's to hoping that's the last traumatic experience in your life.  Ever.

xoxo to our stud man,
mama and dada