Friday morning Emily had another first and this one wasn’t much fun!
We were having the best morning – playing around the house, pretending to try on all of her new summer clothes, dancing, and watching Mickey. Emily picked up her little toy drum and wanted me to get the drumsticks inside the drum. She started to carry the drum to me, but next I know she’s on the ground screaming. At first I tell her to get up, but then I saw all of the blood. Nope, she wasn’t fine this time.
I picked her up, ran to the kitchen and grabbed some paper towels. I wrapped the paper towels around her left, index finger and took a look at the damage. She cut the tip of her index finger pretty bad. I put a band-aide on her finger, put her in the car and we were off to the local Children’s hospital. I called Brad along the way to tell him what was going on. I told him not to worry about meeting us at the ER. It wasn’t life threating – just a cut on her finger (right?).
Emily was so good in the car. She cried some, but not as much as I expected. She knew not to touch her finger. Once we arrived at the ER I checked in, changed her diaper, and we were called back. Emily was scared and hurting, but so brave and tough. The first nurse we saw was so sweet. She took good care of Emily and got us back to a room quickly. We chilled in the room for a little bit and learned how to use their fancy, made for kids, TV system – Emily loved it! The doctor came in and we talked about what happened. He wanted x-rays just to make sure the cut didn’t get down to her bone. No worries, the cut didn’t get down that deep.
I talked with the doctor again and the only thing left was to stitch up her finger. The doctor recommended waiting for the Wound Care Tech to do the stitches. So, I called Brad to give him an update and I used the phrase “stitch it back on.” Apparently I didn’t do a good job explaining how bad the injury was the first time I called him and this was his cue to come to the hospital. Brad arrived a couple minutes before the Wound Care team got to our room. By now Emily was playing with all of the toys in our room and happy as could be. Once they started getting everything ready for the stitches, I decided it was time for me to leave the room. I couldn’t stand watching her cry while she got her stitches and Brad was there to take care of her.
Ten minutes later Emily had 10 little stitches in her finger – two holding the nail back on and eight on her finger tip. We left the ER with instructions to call a plastic surgeon and a big bandage on Emily’s f
inger. On the car ride home she ate every snack I packed and smiled like nothing was wrong. However, she was fascinated with her bandage. You can see the sock over her hand in the picture to the right. We finally had to put a sock over the bandages so she would stop messing with them. The bandage covers her index and middle fingers on her left hand.
Friday evening all the grandparents came over to spoil her a little bit and she played and played and played like nothing ever happened. But that all changed when Brad brought the drum back out. We were trying to figure out how Emily got cut (still can’t figure it out). The second Emily saw that drum she froze. And then started bawling. She knew that drum hurt her and she didn’t want anything to do with it. The drum is now in the garage.
Today we saw the plastic surgeon. Everything looked just fine. She’s going to lose her nail and it will take about 3 months to grow back. We’ll keep it bandaged for another 1-2 weeks but then she’s good to go. I think I was more traumatized by the whole thing than she was. Kids are tough.
Lessons learned – if we ever have to take Emily to the ER for anything, we are going to the Children’s Hospital. Everyone I dealt with was amazing! They were so sweet and took such good care of our little girl. I know that this was a minor emergency compared to so many other things that come through that hospital everyday. But it was a big deal to us. They took such good care of all of us.
