My First Trip to the ER

Well, it was inevitable.  Yesterday afternoon I made my first trip to Children’s Hospital Emergency Room.  It wasn’t a life or death situation, thank God!  But it was enough drama for me.  We were at a play date at a fast food restaurant play area.  Cruz was the youngest child actually climbing on the equipment and running around.  Believe it or not, he didn’t get hurt while playing.  He was running to me when he tripped (he’s not the most coordinated kid) and hit the edge of a bench.  He almost missed the bench, and because he was so close to the edge of it actually made it much worse.  His bottom teeth poked all the way through his lower lip.  As you probably know, the mouth bleeds ALOT!  So at first I couldn’t tell how bad it was.  Cruz had that horrible “I’m really hurt” cry where they suck in air and then don’t make a sound for a good 10 to 15 seconds while their face is contorted horribly.  I got out a baby wipe and it was soaked with blood almost immediately, then I was covered in blood too as he wiggled and rubbed up against my shirt and face.  We started to draw the attention of people trying to eat their lunch (I think we were grossing out alot of people with all the blood) so we made our apologies and left.  Did I forget to mention I was also keeping my 6 year old nephew and 4 year old niece?  Anyway, I wrangled them all into the car and decided I needed to have his lip looked at, even though he had already stopped crying and seemed fine.  But he did have a hole in his lip and it was swelling FAST.  So I ran by his doctor’s office that was only a mile or so away.  It was Wednesday, the day they close early…GREAT!  This entire time, my niece and nephew are complaining because I promised them fast food once they finished playing and because of the accident we didn’t get anything to eat.  So between, “I’m hungry” and “I want something to drink” I decided to stop by a “quick care” facility near by.  I basically just wanted someone with a medical background to tell me whether Cruz needed stitches.  The nurses there said they didn’t treat kids that young but it looked like he needed to go to Children’s.  Wonderful!  So I loaded all three kids up again and headed to Birmingham.  Luckily, Children’s Hospital has free valet parking for folks taking someone into the emergency room.  That’s great, since I had no cash on me and three kids in the back.  We went in, signed in and waited.  Not as long as I thought we would wait.  We got called back in about 30 minutes.  There a very nice nurse and doctor made me hold Cruz down, which isn’t easy by the way (he’s freakishly strong) and they checked out his lip.  After some discussion they decided it was already sealing up nicely (only an hour after the fall) and it was a clean cut.  They said stitches would probably leave more of a scar than the cut.  They also mentioned that because he was so hard to hold down, he’d most likely have to be sedated to get stitches, and I was NOT for that.  So after initaling and signing tons of paperwork, we left.  In retrospect, I could have skipped the two and a half hour trip, since the doctors didn’t do anything.  But at least I got that first er trip under my belt and if/when I have to go back, I’ll know what to expect.