Boys will be boys

Well...we have now successfully lived through our first emergency room visit...wait, that's not right. We have now successfully lived through our second emergency room visit with Aidan. Or I should say I have. John was midair somewhere between here and Kansas at the time, of course. Here's the story.



At about 10:00am on Friday, I decided it was high time the kids and I get out of the house. I had Neely all ready in her carrier, the diaper bag was packed, I had my shoes on, and as I went to put Aidan's shoes on him, I realized we needed to do one more diaper change before leaving home. I took him up to our bedroom and changed him in the middle of the floor. As I was bundling up the dirty diaper and he was exiting the room, he tripped over his own two feet and whacked his head on the floor. This kind of thing happens all the time. Aidan has just hit a little growth spurt, and he's usually clumsier until he gets used to his new, bigger self. When he turned around, he was screaming and clutching his head. It took me a minute to pry his hand away from his forehead, and that should've been my sign that this was not the usual bump on the head.



The poor kiddo's head was split open pretty deep, deep enough that I was seeing things in there that you're really not supposed to, and it was bleeding like crazy. That's when hysteria set in. A million things are running through my mind...what to hold it together with, who to call for help, what to do with Neely, what emergency room to take him to, etc. I get hold of a friend down the street to come over and help me, and as I'm waiting for her, my adrenaline kicks in. I don't know how it affects you, but me? Adrenaline just makes me nauseous. I honestly thought I was going to pass out in the floor. It is at this point that I realize that I will not be able to drive him to the hospital and, for the first time in my life, dial 911. I had to repeat my address several times before the dispatcher could even understand me, Aidan was yelling so loud. I'm sure the recording of my call is hilarious. I am shouting at the top of my lungs, "1-0-7 F-O-U-L..." You get the idea.



A few minutes later, I have two EMT's and three MP's (that's military police for those who're unfamiliar with the acronym) in my living room firing questions and trying to take care of Aidan. What's Neely doing? Sleeping. No, I'm not kidding. No amount of hysterical shrieking could wake her.



Now, it's time for the ambulance ride. Aidan was so excited to be riding in it, that he actually forgot about his head for a little while, and he was compliant enough to actually let me hold an ice pack on his head. The EMT's got word that there were trains coming (and we had to cross two tracks before reaching the hospital), so they actually turned the lights on and did the whole crazy driving, weaving all over the road thing. Whenever we'd take a sharp turn or hit a bump in the road, Aidan would go, "Whoa! Whoa!" It was funny.



The benefit of taking the ambulance to the emergency room is that they have a room waiting for you when you get there. You get to skip all of that waiting room stuff. It still doesn't make them treat you any more quickly. I think we were there for an hour and a half before they tried to stitch him up the first time. Yes, I said the first time.



I'd asked the nurse preparing all the things in the room for the doctor if Aidan could be sedated for the procedure. She looked at me as though I were nuts for wanting to drug my child and assured me that they'd be able to hold him still. They wrapped him in a bed sheet and strapped him to this board thing with Velcro. I think they called it a papoose. It was, essentially, a straight jacket of sorts. Actually, come to think of it, a straight jacket might have worked better. My friend Ashley and I (she's the one who followed the ambulance in the car with Neely and was a total Godsend all day) were trying to keep Aidan's body still, while two nurses were supposed to be holding his head. Cue hysterical screaming again. It was along the lines of, "Mommy! Mommy! I don't want to lie down! I want to get up! Mommy!" It was awful. The nurses could not hold him still enough for the doctor to stitch him, and the doctor stormed out of the room telling them to go ahead and sedate him. I mean, I hate to say, "I told you so." But seriously. He's two years old. What did they expect?



An hour later, he's being given a shot for conscious sedation and getting his little head fixed up with six stitches. Next, we had to wait for the drugs to wear off again. He was so funny while he was sedated. It was like he was in slow motion. Everything he said took twice as long to come out. At one point, I was hanging over him, playing with his hair and talking to him, and he points at me and says, "Mommmmmy.......four.....eyes." I can only assume he was seeing double. I laughed for a while over that one. He said a lot of other funny stuff, I just can't remember all of it.

At 3:15pm, he was released to go home. The child still wasn't back to normal until closer to 6:00pm, and luckily, he really hasn't noticed that he's got stitches in his head since. I guess he'll be reminded on Wednesday when we go and have them removed.

I'd attach a photo, but I have no clue how to get them from my phone onto the computer. It's probably just as well. It was pretty gruesome.