We had a great day yesterday. We are taking a Spring Break this week from school and I felt like I had gotten a good start on my ‘to-do’ list for the week. Our day went downhill very fast when we arrived home from Emma’s flute lesson.
I told the kids they could play outside until we had to run another errand. This mostly means they ride bikes in our relatively long driveway. They were excited and Cami took off running from the car to the garage, only to fall, hitting her head on the corner of a brick retaining wall. All I saw was blood and I immediately panicked! I ran her inside and got her head cleaned up only to realize that even though it wasn’t big, her wound was pretty deep and would leave a scar. I called the doctor to see what he thought I should do and he said definitely take her to the ER since it was so close to her eye and she wouldn’t want a big scar there.
[mygal=cami_headwound]
I quickly envision four kids in the ER for who knows how long and get a hold of a friend who willingly takes the kids – right at dinner time, I might add! So, I literally drop them off with some food in tow and head to the ER. The best part of the night for me was the valet parking. One less thing to worry about! Plus they have a separate Children’s ER so I thought we’d for sure be out of there in no time!
We waited about 45 minutes before the triage nurse saw us – not bad, I thought. But, then we waited another 2 1/2 hours to be taken back for the doctor, only to be seated in a hallway for the supervisor to give Cami a ‘once over’ before the plastic surgeon looked at her. Thankfully the nursing staff there was amazing! They all kept passing by Cami and sweetly singing her name in its Spanish form “Camilla.”
I knew Cami wasn’t going to have anything to do with getting stitches . . . let alone, that close to her eye and was a little nervous. The patient right before us with the plastic surgeon was a little girl about 8 months older than Cami who had the same exact injury in the same exact place! So, the nurses brought her out to ‘talk’ to Cami about what the doctor would do. It was sweet to see those two girls with bandaids in matching places. I wish I would have taken a picture!
The plastic surgeon was great as was the nurse who held Cami’s head for the stitches. They wrapped Cami in a ‘papoose’ type contraption and laid her on the bed. I tried to talk to her the whole time and rub my hand on her elbow (which was the only exposed area of the papoose) so she’d know I was there. She was scared and kept saying, “No. No. Mommy, scared!” It was so sweet and tender as she tried to be brave but cried through the whole thing – towards the end just screaming because she couldn’t move her body. She ended up with 10 stitches – 5 inside and 5 outside. The nurse quickly rewarded Cami with a soft teddy bear and then came back with a pink blanket and pillow for her to take home with cookies and juice!
The doctor gave me the run-down of medication, taking care of the wound, and follow up appointments and I was so ready to be out of there after 4 hours! So, we gathered up our things, thanked the nursing staff, stopping at the front desk to be sure they didn’t need anything else, and left. While we were waiting for ANOTHER 1/2 hour at the pharmacy, we get a phone call from the hospital saying we left before they could discharge us. Oops! There wasn’t really anything else they needed to tell me so that was that. Cami enjoyed her cookies and juice while we waited for her medicine.
[mygal=cami_pharmacy]
After that long story – Cami is doing fine and is proud of her bandaid and has been carrying her teddy bear around all day today. I just checked on her after I put her down for her nap and this is what I found:
[mygal=cami_nap]
All snuggled up with her teddy bear and covered with her soft pink blanket from the hospital!
Leave a Comment