Last Saturday afternoon, my 2-year-old baby fell off the ladder to her brother's bunk beds. She fell onto a plastic tape dispenser (that was already in half, so the middle part was sticking up farther than the outside) and broke it. It made a perfect little circle on the crown of her head.
As I was quickly comforting her, I was feeling her head and suddenly my hand felt wet. I looked at it and saw blood. My husband looked at her head and said, right away, "Eww. That's deep. She's going to need stitches."We rushed everyone into the car and headed for help. We stopped at the nearest prompt care to see if they could do stitches on a head of a baby. Nope. Because it was a fall and she was so young, they sent us to the hospital because they thought she would need a CT scan and they obviously can't do that at prompt care. (The hospital ended up not doing one anyway. Still glad I went to the ER, though.)
We didn't go to the ER in the first place because it is so dang expensive. We had an ER visit from when Owen was about 2 years-old and it was ridiculous how much it cost. So we wanted to avoid that if we could.
Anyway, we got to the hospital and luckily they got us right in. Poor Grant didn't get to go with us. He stayed in the lobby with the kids (and walked around the outside of the hospital and treated the kids to Dairy Queen, across the street).
It took about two and a half hours in the ER to get her all fixed up (there's always so much waiting in hospitals. It's likely only going to get worse, right?)...
They originally said they would do stitches (which I expected), in which case they would have to shave a portion of her hair. They also said it would be likely to scar and the hair not likely to grow out of where it would scar. Then, a doctor came in and suggested staples. Brilliant, right? (I was thinking, "What? Are you crazy?? Staples on a two-year-old?") Well, whatever. But then when they said they wouldn't have to shave her hair at all and it shouldn't scar like the stitches, I was sold! Get 'er done.
She was wonderful in the hospital. When a nurse or doctor would come in and have her do something for them, she would and she held still and quite for everything. She didn't cry the entire time. She didn't even flinch when they were putting the staples in. Youch!
All of the nurses loved her. They kept coming in saying she was the best patient they've ever had! Better than most adults. One young guy nurse even asked her if he could keep her. He kept saying, "You have no idea how wonderful she is!" Um, yep, I know how wonderful she is. I love that girl! It was a pretty good ER visit, because it was her and not any of my other kids. Enough said.
These photos aren't very good because they were taken on my dinky phone camera while in the ER.
In pretty good spirits.
She got her head wrapped to hold in the anesthetic gel, for twenty minutes.
Ouch! Before staples.
Hopefully everything goes well in the next few days with healing and she'll be staple free by next Monday. We feel blessed that she didn't need a CT scan and that it wasn't something harder or more oddly shaped, that she fell on. It was nice that it was on a Saturday when Grant could take care of the kids and we didn't actually have much plans except Saturday errands. It could have been a lot worse. I'm happy that it wasn't.
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