Stitches

Well..... we started 2012 off with a bang!!! Literally! Monday night(1/2/12), about 5 minutes before Carter should have been in bed, he was running around looking for me/possibly thinking we were playing hide and seek and he smashed/bumped/ran into/hit the corner edge of a wall that juts out within our closet. Neither Brody nor I saw him hit, but he has showed us how it happened since then. Immediately blood was everywhere and Brody is saying we need to go to the ER. I tried to call the pediatrician to see if we could wait until the morning, but since it was after hours it took to long for them to get back to me with an answer. We woke Charlotte up and all drove to Texas Children's Hospital in Katy. We were hoping since that hospital branch is new(er) and not in the heart of the medical center, that it might be cleaner and less crowded. It wasn't TOO bad, but still not an ideal place to have your kids hang out. Thankfully, since he had an open wound (I have that picture too, but will spare you the bloody details) we were able to see a nurse rather quickly and get a more appropriate gauze pad and tape instead of the bloody wash rag we had been using. But then she informed us that he would need stitches and they were currently running about a 3 hour wait. By the grace of God, my friend Julie had been at her parents' house, which was near by, celebrating her birthday with her family. Without my asking, she arrived in the waiting room just as we were coming back out from the nurse. After some deliberating, we decided to have Julie drive Brody and Charlotte home so they could go back to sleep/go to sleep for work and Carter and I stayed to endure the wait. Carter was fine at this point (and truthfully was fine tempermentally-wise before we even left the house) and was enjoying watching movies way past his bed time!!! We got into the doctor around 11:00pm. They put some numbing medication on his head (hence the Rambo picture) that had to sit for 30 minutes. Then they came in with shots of Litocain(sp?) to numb it really well. That was the most uncomfortable/little bit of crying part for Carter, but he did really well! The Child Life Specialist had prepped me that they might have to "swaddle" him to prevent his arms from flailing, but we did not have to do that. He was very still!! He was playing I Spy with one of those I Spy books and didn't even notice when the stitches started. He got 8 stitches total. He was asking the nurse all kinds of questions and telling her about the pictures. When she would step out, I could hear her telling the other nurses that she couldn't believe that her 3 year old patient was doing so well. They were giggling about some of the things he had said. So around 1am we got discharged and now we are just watching for infection and were given instructions for lots of sunscreen and protection in the future to prevent further scaring. Brody had promised him a sucker at the hospital (assuming they would have something as a treat) so as soon as the doctor shook my hand and we said good bye, Carter piped in, "do you have a sucker for me?" They did not, but they had a popsicle!! He was good to go!

Hopefully, we won't have too many more ER visits, but if it's only once every 3.5 years, I can handle that!

Happy New Year! Hope you're wasn't a BUST!