A night in the Emergency Room....

Well, I have always told myself that sooner or later I would spend the evening in the emergency room with one of my boys due to an injury. Having a brother myself, I just knew it was bound to happen. In fact, we used to jokingly call my brother "Raggedy Andy" because he received so many stitches growing up.

We still aren't too sure how it all happened....if only Jesse could communicate to us a little better. I guess it will always remain a bit of a mystery. All we know was that he was playing in the corner of the living room behind one of the big brown recliner chairs with his matchbox cars. Bethany and Sarah were playing in the same room, and I was in the kitchen cleaning up our dinner dishes. All of a sudden, I hear loud crying from Jesse and see Bethany come running in, herself on the verge of tears, yelling, "Mom, Jesse is bleeding...he's bleeding bad!" I of course dropped everything, ran in and scooped him up. He had come out from behind the chair at this point and ran to me, blood dripping down the right side of his face. The girls start weeping, I start to panic at the amount of blood I am seeing, and quickly grab a clean kitchen towel, soak it with cold water and try to wipe away the blood to see where it is all coming from. I can tell that the injury is very near his right eye and pray to God that he hasn't injured the eye itself. After cleaning away some of the blood, I can see a pretty deep cut just about 1/2 cm from the corner of his eye. Thank you God that his eye isn't punctured! The girls are still crying, Jesse is screaming and I am trying to compose myself as well. Poor little Jared is wandering around at our feet trying to make sense of all the commotion. I was able to stop the bleeding by applying pressure and then icing the wound. After getting everyone settled down, and consulting the hubby, we decided it best to take him in to the emergency room to get it checked out....just to be safe. I grab a few essentials while daddy put a band-aid over the boo-boo and we head out the door.

It never fails to boggle my mind how a trip to the emergency room always requires a wait of at least three hours. There weren't that many people in the waiting room...and everyone on duty seemed to be moving at a snail's pace. After our initial checking in, we waited and we waited and then we waited some more. Thankfully, Jesse had calmed down and although he was tired, it being way past his bedtime at this point, we enjoyed some quiet snuggling time reading a book and flipping through the pages of some magazines. Finally they called his name and we were ushered in to a private room to await the doctor. I was thankful for a comfortable rocking chair at this point, where I could put my feet up and relax and for our own TV, where we could surf some channels. Again we waited and we waited and we waited some more. We watched "Meercat Manor" and got grossed out watching "Survivorman" eat some scorpions...blaaah! Finally the doctor came in. Jesse was very brave while he removed the baid-aid to examine the cut. He just stuck out his little lower lip and it quivered a bit, while the doc cleaned the wound a bit more. The doctor then gave me several choices of remedy and in the end we both agreed that liquid stitches would probably be best due to his age. (I just couldn't picture pinning the little guy down to stitch him up with a needle and thread!) So again, after some more waiting, the doctor returned with a nurse and Jesse was laid on the bed, the nurse holding his head, me holding both of his hands and the doctor applying the liquid stitches. I was so proud of my little guy! He laid so still and although his lower lip again stuck out a bit and a few tears squeezed out of the corners of his eyes...he took it "like a man!" The doctor was even quite impressed and said, "Wow, my own kids would have never laid this still! What a trooper!" In a few minutes it was all over and Jesse was promised some stickers...which immediately stopped the tears and the lower lip from sticking out. LOL! We left the hospital just before midnight, Jesse's pjs ornately decorated with "Spiderman", "Legos" and "Wild Animal" stickers. He proudly pointed them out to everyone we passed on the way out to the car. We came home to daddy waiting up for us and worried sisters and brother sound asleep.

As you can see by the picture above, Jesse woke up today smiling, a little tired having missed about 4 hours of sleep from his late night adventure, but faring well just the same! The doctor doesn't think that the cut will leave much of a scar and we are ever so thankful that his eye was not injured in a more serious way! Again...God was watching out for this little guy! And now mommy has experienced the first of "hopefully not too many more" emergency room visits.

Life with boys...always exciting...never a dull moment!