Tuesday, July 17, 2012

In which Lex gets stitches

...and no, I don't even know how many. 

It happened on Sunday afternoon, right at lunchtime.  Connor and Lex and I were upstairs in the loft, playing with Legos on the train table.  Lex said he was hungry, so I walked downstairs to make lunch.  I had only made it as far as opening the pantry door when I heard the thud, and then the scream.  I knew right away that someone had been hurt pretty bad.  It was that kind of scream.

I ran upstairs in time to see Lex standing up, and when he looked up at me I saw that he was bleeding (a lot) from his head.  So, I yelled for Kevin, got Lex a paper towel and an ice pack, and put him in the car to go to the urgent care.  As soon as I saw the gash in Lex's browline, I knew it was beyond my skill to deal with.

Have I ever mentioned to you how much I love the new children's urgent care that opened recently by our house?  We have been there before, and we were in and out so quickly that we were done before they had even completed our admittance paperwork.

We were taken care of right away, and even though we had to wait 30 minutes for some medicine to numb Lex's head before it could be stitched back up, we were done in about 45 minutes.  The worst part for Lex was when the doctor had to take off the bandaid that Daddy had put on at home.  After that, he kept asking to go home, and was really nervous when they put the numbing medicine on.  But, after that, he fell asleep in my arms during the 30 minute wait.  He woke up when I laid him back down on the hospital table to get his stitches put in, but he never opened his eyes.  He was very cooperative physically, but he screamed and cried the entire time.  It was heartbreaking, which is why no one was counting how many stitches he got.  If I had to guess, I would say that he got more than 5, but less than 10.  As soon as it was over, he was back to his regular good mood.

Since then, we have been making a big deal over letting him pick which bandaid he gets to wear.  He's been picking out different Angry Birds bandaids every day, and I think that's been enough motivation for him to let me check and clean his stitches.

I have also ascertained that Lex didn't bump his head on the top edge of the train table, as I had assumed, but he instead hit the table leg.  There are some discrepancies in the stories of my two kids as to *exactly* how it happened, but Lex was apparently standing on the chair, and then he either jumped or was pushed, and fell into the table.  Lex clearly blamed Connor, and was very angry with him the first day.  (He was also angry at me for making him get the stitches, but he seems to have gotten over that, too.)