It's only a flesh wound...

Liz and I marked a major milestone today as parents--our first trip to the emergency room!

The relatively short version of the story is that Liz and I are very sick today--so sick that I stayed home from work, which nearly never happens (apparently the joys of school starting include the various bugs and germs that kids bring home to get their parents sick). So Liz and I decided this morning to go to the gym, check Joey and Tori into the kids area, and stagger into the sauna/jacuzzi/menthol steam room to try to sweat this sickness out of us.

As we're walking into the children's area to check them in, Joey did his typical run ahead to jump up on a bench where he can see over into the kids computer area. The problem was that today someone had parked a stroller in the middle of the floor in the way of everything, rather than over where all of the other strollers were. Joey went running through the small lobby, clipped his foot on the wheel of the aforementioned stroller, and shot forward full-speed and full-force into the aforementioned bench. Did I mention that this bench inexplicably has a slab of marble on the top of it, which is slightly beveled at the corner, but still is amongst the harder and sharper objects that a child could ever bang his or her head against? No? Well it does.

Since we were still coming around the corner into the room when it happened, I didn't see the actual contact, but could see just a fleeting glimpse of his little body careening recklessly forward into where I knew nothing soft awaited him. He was on the floor by the time I was up to him and looking at me with his hand on his head and a terrified look on his face. He let out that haunting terrified scream kids do when they're really really hurt--the same scream that makes a parent's body crackle with adrenaline and able to lift a car over their head (or at least not feel like a walking zombie).

I grabbed him up and looked for the damage, which was easy to find since blood was gushing from a spot about four inches up from his ear, near the top of his head.

I whisked him out and around the corner into the men's locker room where I could wash his head and inspect the damage. As all the gross naked old men stared at me (stop staring and just get dressed already so you can get to Applebees for your 11am lunch!!!), I successfully cleared the spot and got a great view of his skull, through about a 1.5 inch gash that he had opened up on the marble bench (who puts marble on a bench in the kids area lobby? Is it even comfortable to sit on?).

Luckily, some attentive gym employees had followed me in with ice and towels and we put direct pressure on the wound and stopped the blood pretty quickly. I carried Joey out to find Liz, who was waiting right outside wondering what was going on. When I said to Liz, "we need to go to the hospital and get this stitched up" Joey said, "NO! I'm okay now Dad, I'll stop crying!" I told him that the hospital would be fine and that he could cry all he wanted.

We are lucky to live in a place that has such great hospitals. Our main hospital was just a few minutes away and they have a ridiculous kids-only emergency room, which is more like a playground with doctors. They were very good with him and only slightly annoying to me, which says a lot for hospital folk. Joey was in the door, through triage, assessed and cleaned up by the nurse, watched Shrek in his own deluxe patient's room while he waited, seen by the doctor, held down by the nurse while the doctor did a needle torture and put 5 staples into his head, and out the door in about an hour. That has to be a modern record for an emergency room visit.

Joey is very interested in his staples and was such an incredibly brave boy. Only when the doctor was jamming a large needle every which way into his head to "numb the pain" (which I took to mean as "totally exhaust all of his pain receptors in his head to make the staples seem not so bad") did he even cry. He kept telling us things while we were waiting like, "I won't cry. I'm tough because I eat fruit and vegetables." When things obviously hurt him, he winced (actually, we all did), but only cried during the needle torture.

Now he has a gigantic gash on his head with five metal staples that look like the hospital picked them up at Office Depot. On the bright side, Halloween is coming up and we can dress him up like Frankenstein or Dana Carvey's old SNL character Head-wound Harry.

Here are some pics of the poor little guy.

Patiently waiting in the triage station.


Trying to be positive in the patient room--he didn't want to lay on the bed.

And here is a link to some slightly more graphic pictures (they're not that bad, but Liz insists they are inappropriate for the front page of a family blog).