A Trip to the ER

Wednesday turned out to be one of those days that as a parent, you just aren't sure how to handle and you pray never happens. Big Brother slammed his bedroom door on Little Brother's finger. Little Brother's finger was cut and bleeding. Now, I know fingers bleed a lot, so I immediately showed his finger to Daddy, who told me to get to urgent care as fast as possible.

Reason to freak out #1 – Blood, hurt baby

Reason to freak out #2 – Daddy volunteered for a while with am EMT service. He has seen some really bad accidents. Daddy was also a Marine and I have never, ever seen him with a worried look on his face from blood. So I threw a clean diaper and a pair of shorts on Little Brother and high tailed it the mile and half to urgent care. They rushed us right back. I figured it just looked worse than it was because he had put his finger in his mouth and all over my face. I'm sure we looked frightful. I thought they would clean up the cut, bandage it, give him some pain meds and we would be home.

I was very, very wrong.

The nurse started cleaning Little Brother's finger up. Then she went to get a second nurse. Then a third. The the doctor. Then, they said words I never in my life wanted to hear. The tip of his finger was almost amputated and it might be broken. Go to the hospital. The wrapped his entire hand in a bandage and sent me on my way. I made the arrangements I needed to for Daddy to meet us at the hospital and for Grammy to take Big Brother for a while and drove like mad to the hospital, speeding tickets be damned.

We got to the hospital at 4:55. He was finally seen by triage about a hour and a half later. I hadn't seen the extent of the injury until the triage nurse took that bandage off. The tip of his tiny finger could just open like a hinge. They said he needed to be seen immediately, wrapped it back up, and ordered an x-ray, which they did about 15 minutes later.

Then we waited.

And waited.

Little Brother played in the waiting room and didn't complain about his hand at all. A nice teenager even let little brother doodle on her iPhone.

Finally about 9:00 we got into a room. The doc came in and said his finger didn't look broken or if it was, there was just a tiny hairline type fracture that would just heal on its own. Then came the fun part. Fixing the finger. While the doctor stitched up his finger, I tried to keep Little Brother's head turned away so he couldn't look at his finger.

I swallowed my pride and sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star over and over trying to keep my sweet two year old calm while the doctor stitched up his finger. It took seven stitched to reattach the tip of his finger. That is a lot of stitched for a tiny finger. The doc said it looked good because the tissue was still pink and bleeding. For this kind of an injury in an adult, they don't even try to reattach the tip. They just remove the tip and patch it.

Little Brother lost his entire fingernail and we won't know if it will ever grow back for a week or more. Today we will see a hand surgeon and hopefully get more information about how this will heal and if he will need plastic surgery to repair damage.

After it was all over and his finger was splinted, I took out my phone to text Grammy and let her know what was going on. Little Brother turned to me, stuck out his hand and said,  "Cheese."

I wish I was that brave.

I am not that brave.

I made it through the whole ordeal with a brave face for my baby.

Then, I went home and threw up.

As moms, we never will get used to our babies getting hurt. All we can do is put on a brave face for them and learn a lesson from the bravery of our children.