We had a particularly exciting time at the campground this past weekend. The Tyrant took a header into a stone step and split his chin open. The poor little guy screamed and gushed blood all over. The volume of blood told us he would need stitches, even before we could see the gash clearly. We left the big kids with friends and headed up to the closest emergency room. I was dreading spending several hours in a waiting room, but to our amazement, we were in and out in an hour. The doctor was able to use glue and steri strips to close his chin, and we were very thankful to avoid the trauma of stitches. The Princess had to get stitches above her eye as a toddler, and I never wanted to repeat that hysteria.
We stopped at a store to get children's ibuprofen, thinking that he might have a hard time sleeping with the pain. He whimpered a bit but seemed ok when he went to sleep.
Apparently he had a great night's sleep, and got up with the birds. I'm not sure exactly how early he was awake, but campground security knocked on our door & returned him to us at 7:30am. It was a proud moment for sure, when I admitted that we hadn't even known that he was gone, since we had all still been asleep. We have no clue how he got out of the camper without us hearing him, since the door is right near our bed. He was found near the camp store, which is ironically where he had fallen the night before. (Maybe he was looking for the ice cream he missed out on??) The dog was also loose, no idea where she may have been during this, but thankfully she was running circles around the security man when I opened the door.
The main thing I learned from this weekend, outside of the need to tie bells to my child and explain to him the reasons why he must wear a helmet 24 hours a day, is this: when your child splits his chin open, and the doctor clears the blood away so she can close the gash, do not, under any circumstances, look closely to see the damage, because it will look like ground beef and you will want to chuck, which you cannot do because said child is on your lap having his face super glued back together. Here endeth the lesson.
4 comments:
oh dear.
when Jack was 2 he fell on the bleachers at randy's softball game and split his ear wide open. I had to hold my screaming child down while they put stitches in his cartilage. On my birthday. Yeah. Fun times!
glad everything turned out as smoothly as it did considering. <3
Yikes! At least you didn't have to spend the whole night there. LOL at wanted to hurl at seeing the meat chin. Just thinking about it makes my stomach flip flop. How's it look today?
Kate
The steri strips are looking rather grungy today. It's hard to keep clean being that it's just below his mouth, and his favorite food is PB&J, lol.
3/4 of my boys have scars on the bottom of their chins for one reason or another. Working in the ER I think it's rather cool to look inside a wound, but it's an entirely different experience when it's your own child!
I'm glad he's ok, didn't need stitches and was found before there was time to panic that he was missing.
God is good!
Julie:)
Post a Comment