We got my daughter a balance bike on Friday. We left later that day to go to the beach with friends. When we returned, she wanted to go riding. We put her helmet on and she and I went on an errand to deliver a book to friends some houses over.
On the way back, she got out of control going too fast. I had told her to slow down, but she wasn't paying attention. She fell over and our friends, Robbie and Elise, helped her get up. I thought she had learned her lesson.
Not ten minutes later she was back on the bike, going down the hill to our cul-de-sac. She slowed down and we looked away. Then, she made a mistake. This is a mistake we've been afraid of for some time that we all figured was going to happen to one or more children eventually. She went into the driveway of our neighbors at the bottom of the street. Their driveway is steep. No, it's not steep, it's a cliff. It's a fun looking cliff to a child who doesn't know how to control their speed on a new balance bike (or other wheel-based conveyance). It's fun looking to a young person who has not much experience in pain and no idea of their own mortality. In other words, all the children on our street.
She wiped out. We didn't see it, but it must have been bad. My son told us, looking rather ashen, that she had fallen. We could hear the screams. My husband got her up and said "we have a stitches situation". We walked back to the house, fairly calm, because that helmet we make her wear, saved her from far worse injury.
I called my sitter and asked if she was available right now. She said she'd come right over. She was at the house in I think three minutes (she lives literally around the corner). We daubed off her chin and got her in the car. I called our friends and asked where to go, because we don't have much experience in the whole trauma area. He suggested a children's emergency room at one of the hospitals.
We arrived and checked in. My daughter was in fine spirits the entire time, including dancing around on the floor of the waiting room to an interactive video game that's projected on the floor. When we were called back, the doctor looked at her and gave us a rundown of what she was planning on doing. I contacted our friends (both doctors) again and asked what they recommended. I was so touched by their concern. The husband made several calls to his associates, confirming which suture type would be better. We got some advice and when our doctor came back, I made a request to change her treatment plan.
The request was to change the external sutures to ones that were not rapid absorbing. Those are helpful in that you don't have to do a follow-up appointment to have the sutures removed. However, they have a higher inflammatory response than the alternative, Prolene option. We told her follow-up would not be a problem and we'd prefer the non-dissolving sutures for the external stitches (she needed both internal and external stitches).
They gave my daughter IN Versaid, a mild sedative, injected nasally, and then she put in the stitches. The sedative didn't work as well as would be ideal. While my daughter wasn't in any real pain, she was aware there was tugging and pulling on her chin and we had to hold her hands and neck still so the doctor could stitch her up. She wasn't in real distress, just reacting to the situation by wiggling and not being still.
When the stitches were in, we took her home. The Versaid made her very friendly, but in a slow-reaction kind of way. She waved at people and answered questions, but only after thinking about it for a while. She couldn't walk well when we got her home and she tried to tell her very asleep brother about getting stitches while lying on her mattress. She fell asleep shortly and had a good night's rest.
She was three-hours short on sleep, but seemed ready to go to school this morning. Tomorrow I'm scheduling an appointment with a plastic surgeon to confirm we're doing the right things to ensure her healing will be optimal for minimal scaring.
She still doesn't seem upset at all by the entire ordeal. She wants to see the chin when we change the bandage and she likes to look at pictures of her chin on the phone. I hope it's due to her personality, which I think is a lot of it, but also how we dealt with the situation, making it something that was important, but not terrible or awful.
We talked to her about how her brother had gone to the hospital before to have a abscess fixed by a doctor and now she was going to get stitches. She was interested in both the hospital, the help the doctor was going to give her and the doctor herself. While we were in the waiting room, I told her what was going to happen. She looked at me and said, "I want to be a doctor." Perhaps someday she will.
The Big Boy Update: My son impressed me all weekend at the beach. He was the only boy, with five girls surrounding him at the beach house. He got along with them all, didn't complain and was very friendly to everyone. I missed several picture opportunities, but the one I remember the most is my son sitting at the edge of the top bunk, between Juliette and Ellie, watching some show on the Disney Channel that was targeted at eight-year-olds. He was entranced and very happy to be hanging out with the older girls.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Today my daughter's chin is weeping and oozing from the large chin wound she got yesterday (see above). The scrape on top of the scrape on top of the laceration on her chin needs to air out, dry and scab over. We let her watch some television for a while in the hopes that the inflammation would reduce and we could put some gauze back over it.
The Broken Keyboard Situation: Remember that capital "U" problem? It's not a fluke, it's the keyboard. I'm going to have to take it in for replacement it appears. I have to keep my laptop open on the left of my desk for those situations in which I need to type a capital U. As it turns out, I rarely type that particular keystroke. But when I need to, it's nice to have the keystroke combination work.
No comments:
Post a Comment