Six Staples In His Head

I was standing right there! Ugh... sign me up for the bad moms club.

My baby's barely two years old and has already been to the ER twice! Well, technically we didn't go to the ER last night, just the after-hours clinic, but we would've gone to the ER if not for the clinic. If you'll recall, last May we went to the ER in southern CA before we learned that Ethan has breath-holding spells and had "only" had a severe attack. [[sigh...]]

Here's last night's story... I'm just getting ready to make dinner when Ethan pushes a dining room chair to the counter by the phone. The chair is facing our back door and I tell Ethan to get down because he is wanting to play with the phone. He loses his balance and WHACK!! falls straight on his back with his head hitting our back door on the way down. I hurry and grab him, praying for no blood, but I already see it. Dang head wounds bleed so much! I put pressure on it and we head to the bathroom so I can get a better look. I yell for Sean to get a clean towel and once I can wipe some of the blood away I see that it's a fairly good size gash in his head and it's definitely going to need some stitches. By this time the bleeding is already slowing down quite a bit, so we grab the diaper bag, my purse and some sweatshirts and head out to the car. Sean drives while I hold the towel on the back of Ethan's head. We called my parents to let them know we are on our way to the ER, but my mom suggests trying our after-hours clinic first (which I had already been debating). Hang up with my mom and call the clinic. Get put on hold. Gee, thanks. Get the front desk, explain everything to her as clearly as possible in my best calm-mom voice (only some quivering... I do pretty good in "emergency" situations) and she puts me back on hold. Get transferred to a nurse and have to repeat the whole story and she starts talking about not letting him sleep too much, getting him up and talking/walking around every couple hours. I'm thinking, "uhh... he needs stitches tonight. Preferably NOW!" Then she finally looks up an appointment just as we pull into the parking lot at 7:30pm. "The earliest we have is an 8:30pm appointment. Do you know where we're located?" Ha! Funny, lady. If you only knew, we're in your parking lot right now! We turn around and head over to my parents to wait. This gave me a chance to wash my hands (which were now covered in dried blood) and for Ethan to eat some pasta (I'm pretty sure he was starving!).

We headed back to the clinic for our appointment and at this point the bleeding had been stopped for a while, just the huge gash in his head. The doctor on call that night just happened to be my old pediatrician, Dr. Strimling. First he trimmed some of Ethan's hair and then shaved the spot covering the gash. He was really good to not shave too much. Then he washed the area and then came the hard part... He numbed the site with an injection needle. I was holding Ethan and he was screaming. Rip my heart out. This took a little while and I finally stopped the doctor because it had sent Ethan into a breath-holding spell. The doctor finished that up and then it was time to lay Ethan down on the table. It took Sean holding his feet and legs, the nurse holding his head and me holding his arms. Dr. Strimling decided that staples would be the best treatment, but Ethan squirmed when the first one went in, so it was off-center and in at an angle. That one took a while to remove and the gash was bleeding like crazy again. We didn't realize until then just how deep the wound was... it went clear to the bone! Finally the doctor got the 6 staples put in and that slowed the bleeding way down. A few minutes later it had fully stopped and Ethan was also calmed down. I had gone into mom mode then and just held him super-tight. It did the trick and helped him to stop crying and control his breathing. This picture (below) was last night before we had a chance to give him a bath this morning (doctor said to wait).

Ethan is a trooper! He is doing GREAT today! We've kept him on fairly regular Tylenol and also put Neosporin on the wound, but other than that there is no swelling or signs of infection. The staples can come out in 7-10 days.