What do we do for fun while daddy's away? Drum roll please...stick our fingers into doors, ride in ambulances to the ER and have a "procedure" to reattach a piece of fingertip. Yes, the trama that I have always feared would happen while Ben was away happened yesterday. He had been gone for less than 24 hours up to New Jersey to start training. *Warning* There are yucky pictures below. Whitney and I were set to have a great day together, just the two of us, getting her 3 year pictures taken and running errands. We arrived the the picture place in the mall, got checked in and proceeded to the bathroom to change into her picture clothes. As we were leaving the bathroom I noticed someone had left some infant baby shoes in there, so I thought I would take them out to see who they belonged to. Whitney went out in front of me, the door closed on its own behind me, I turned to my right to ask the lady holding a baby if the shoes were hers, then...screaming. I looked down, saw Whitney fingers in the door, hinge side, immediately opened the latched door and grab her hand. I saw major blood, and what looked like her fingernail about to fall off, then I saw a major gap between one side of her finger and the other...not good. I ran up front to tell the people I needed an ambulance and rushed back to the bathroom so none of the other children there would see all the blood gushing from her hand, all the while just squeezing the tar out of her finger. A couple of ladies there helped keep both of us from freaking out, the people from the store brought her a balloon and an Easter basket full of goodies. She was definitely in pain, but was mainly mad that I kept squeezing her finger. Finally, a security guard for the mall got there with his little first aid kit and he took over be the mean finger squeezer. Whitney started calming down, still crying, but just kept telling us to stop squeezing it and saying that she wanted her daddy. I told her, "me too" and we prayed for Jesus to heal her boo boo. The EMTs got there they looked at it, immbolized it, strapped her on the stretcher and off we went in the ambulance to Scottish Rite, a children's hospital. She had calmed completely down on the ride there, and was giggling and jibbering as if nothing had ever happened. Long story short for the rest of it...She broke the "tuft" of the bone in the tip of her left, middle finger. It was severed basically along the bed of the nail through, hanging on by the pad side of the finger. They had to sedate her, not complete anesthesia, and they didn't even call it surgery, it was a "procedure", I guess maybe because it was done in the ER room, but it sure looked like surgery to me. They had to remove her fingernail to get it stitched up properly, 7 stitches there, and then 2 more to reattach the fingernail, so 9 little stitches total. And let me tell you, I don't ever, ever want to see my child, or any child for that matter, be sedated like that ever again! She did great during the whole process and really was her normal chatting self with all the docs and nurses, unless anyone wanted to look at it. But even then she was tough. The IV wasn't a fun experience either, but she made it through that too. All the kid movies you can think of were at her disposal, so I think that helped her cope. She watched Snow White and Tinkerbell. We got home around 800, got some more pain medicine in her and got her to bed. She didn't make a peep all night and praise God hasn't complained at all about pain today. I've only given her Motrin and, besides the big club hand, she is her normal self. We are so grateful that it happened the way it did. One, that Lindsey wasn't with me (that would have been a complete disaster), Two, that it could have been her right hand, further down her finger, more fingers, anything...This was the best of the worst for sure. Tomorrow we follow up with a hand specialist and get more of a prognosis, but according to the ER docs who see this quite a bit, she should heal up just fine. The pictures aren't the greatest, all I had was the camera on my phone. We'll be sure to keep everyone posted. Until then...watch out for those doors!
Just getting to her "little bed" in the ER room
Shortly after getting the IV placed
Getting ready to go to sleep, her little eyes glazed over...yuk!
Before...basically if you would have pushed down on her fingertip, it would have just been open
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And after...much better
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Showing off her club hand
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