Warning- Graphic Head Wound Images at the end. The second one especially makes me queasy still. You have been warned.
We had our first incident of stitches in our household yesterday, or in this case, staples. Yesterday morning after Julia and Micah had finished their
breakfast they hurried over to the window at the front of the house to watch
the garbage man go by while I stayed in the kitchen feeding Camden his
breakfast. A few minutes later I heard a crash followed by the telltale wail of
a child who has just fallen. It was Julia and she was crying loud enough that I
could tell this fall really hurt. So I went over to the front room and picked her up and sat her on my lap to comfort her. She told me that she was standing on
the big exercise ball trying to balance on it when she fell and hit her head on the
window sill.
As I was holding her and she was starting to calm down I
felt something wet in her hair. "Uh-oh, this might be blood," I
thought, hoping it wasn't. But sure enough, the back of her head had a good
amount of blood. It was kind of hard to see where the cut was because of all
the blood and hair, so I told Julia I needed to set her up on the counter to
get a better look. I set her up on the counter and moved the hair away to see a
very wide cut on the back of her head. Wide enough that it made me queasy, and
blood doesn't usually bother me too much.
I have never had stitches and don't really know much about
getting them, but this cut looked wide enough to warrant some extra attention.
Serendipitously, last night at our Relief Society activity a few of the ladies
were having a conversation about stitches. One of the neighbor boys had just
gotten stitches a couple days ago and his mom was telling us how glad she was
that her pediatrician had gotten them in before closing, even though it was
past 4:00 pm when she called.
I don't think it would have occurred to me to go to
the pediatrician if I hadn't heard this conversation. I would have been
stressed out trying to figure out there the nearest urgent care or ER was. But
because of this conversation the night before I now knew the pediatrician could
probably sew her up. And it was already stressful enough trying to take care of
Julia while the baby was crying because he wanted out of his high chair and
Micah was crying because he wanted me to help him put on a bike helmet he had
randomly found in the corner. (Micah barely picked up on the fact that Julia
was hurt, but he was happy to hear we were going to the doctor. His response,
"doctor? sucker? " because he knows they give out suckers at the
doctor's office.)
The office staff gave us an appointment for an hour from
then, then transferred us to the on call nurse to make sure we could wait an
hour or if we should just come in right away. The on call nurse said she would
be fine to wait for an hour as long as her head was not bleeding any more. And
it wasn't, even by the time I found the cut it was almost done bleeding. So
Julia got to watch TV with an ice pack on her head while I got everyone ready
to go.
At the doctor's office the nurse cleaned off the cut and I
got my first look at the cut all cleaned up. It was bigger than I was thinking. I had thought it just looked bigger than it probably really was before getting cleaned off because the blood would make it look bigger, but it really was
good size. The doctor came in and told me he would be doing staples because he
wouldn't have to shave a patch of hair like he would have to do with stitches.
He also said he wasn't going to numb her because it would be just as painful to
inject her in that spot as it would be to do the staples.
Julia did really good. Even I was a little nervous, but she
held still and quiet as they did the first staple, then whimpered when they did
the second, then started to cry a little when they did the third and was full
out crying after the fourth staple. Luckily four was the last one and she got
to sit up and get a hug from me and she calmed down quickly.
Afterward we went and got ice cream and played at the play
place at Artic Circle. She has been having fun showing off her staples to
everyone and says it doesn't hurt any more.
Here are the pictures:
Cleaned up and waiting for the doctor to come in.
What a brave girl! She was happy she got a ring as a prize afterwards.
The staples, after her bath so no more blood in her hair.
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