WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT
From time to time, we have taken our kids to the emergency room for non-emergency situations. Croupy coughs or mysterious rashes with high fever in the middle of the night. Once on a Saturday afternoon for an eye injury where we were basically told that nothing was wrong and we just wasted a bunch of money. All this was before we had an after hours clinic here in our small village.
However, a week ago, we had an actual emergency that brought us once again to the ER. This time, we were accompanied by actual fear and panic.
Henry is very much an independent child who rarely asks for help. On this particular day, he was using our piano bench to climb up high enough to reach the TV power button. He didn’t ask for help, because he has done this by himself at least a million times before without any difficulty.
Exhibit #1 – The bench: Unsafe? Yes, and even though I have eyed the bare metal edges on the foot with trepidation, I chose to do nothing about it.
P.S. The bench did not come like this – there used to be rubber stoppers that covered the ends. However, they were not glued on and so they have been lost along with things like the boingy door stops and the spam can openers that unlock our bedroom doors.
One can only imagine what actually happened, because no one was watching Henry while he was climbing up to push the button. I was not even home at the time, and in Steve’s defense, he was in the bathroom. I have been amazed, throughout my life as a mother, at how many things happen while you are attending to the call of nature.
The only thing we know is that Henry was horribly hurt when the bench tipped over and his face smashed into the metal edges. Steve met him in the hallway to find him cupping the blood that was oozing from his chin. It looked minor at first, but upon further inspection he saw that Henry’s chin was flapping open and exposing quite a bit of flesh.
Luckily I was not very far away, and after Steve got Henry loaded into the car, he came and picked me up and we headed out. I had no idea what had happened and was concerned when I saw Henry sitting there howling into a blood stained towel. When I asked him what happened, Steve assured me that I would be sickened if I looked at the injury. I was picturing all sorts of awfulness, and so was actually relieved when we got the ER and they took the towel off.
Henry waiting for the numbing gel to kick in before getting the Lidocaine shot.
The actual wound – but still this does not portray how bad it really looked.
At first they tried to stitch him up without sedating him, but they finally had to put him out. He had to have stitches under the skin, and inside his mouth as well as to close up the cut – 20 in all.
All we could think about is how much more awful it could have been.
Steve left in such a hurry that he was not able to explain what was going on to Hannah who was immediately summoned to take care of Jack because she was the only one home. She was extremely worried and scared to be left so abruptly alone and so she tried to call Grammy who wasn’t home, and my sister Tauna who didn’t answer and finally Grandma and Grandpa Lauer who live in Florida and are two hours ahead of us, but were actually still awake at 10pm EST.
We are very much thankful for our neighbor who helped round up all of our kids and took them to her house to stay until we got home.
We were sure that the rest of the night and the next few days were going to be a trial for us, but Henry was just fine. He never once complained that he was hurting. This is amazing considering our previous experiences with Henry and his dental work.
I have to say the worst part of this whole business was actually getting the stitches out. No matter how many times we told him it would not hurt, he resisted. It took three of us - me, the nurse, and one of the office ladies to pin him down. I would never want to criticize or say that I could do her job better, but I am sure that I could have taken those stitches out faster than the nurse.We struggled with him for half and hour. I was actually sweating by the time we were done.
This is how he looks today. I am worried about the decision that we made when we decided not to call in the plastic surgeon. I know with time the scar will fade, but this is still pretty bad. I guess we will just have to wait and see what it looks like when he’s bigger.
