Monday evening was very eventful (and colorful)!
It started out like most every other weekday evening starts out in our house.
I arrived home a little after 7, changed my clothes to get comfortable as all 3 of my lovelies followed me around to tell me about their day as I prepare dinner.
WonderBoy and Sweetie Pie began roughhousing and running around from room to room and through the kitchen, something I just don't tolerate well when I am cooking because I always worry they will come near the stove. JR and I had to stop them several times because with one so big and one so small, there’s bound to be an accident. Sweetie Pie is the self proclaimed Little Train that Could and WonderBoy just doesn’t even realize how powerful he is and how the littlest tap could send his sister reeling. The kids weren't listening and were pretty whipped up from all this activity so around 9:30 we sent WonderBoy in to hit the shower and we began cleaning up the evening dishes and chatting with my uncle who is staying with us.
Sweetie Pie was still in super duper high energy mode and decided to continue the frenetic pace, even without her big brother. She put her doll in her doll carriage and began sprinting with it toward the kitchen and the open door to the porch. That was the last bit of true clarity I had. From that moment the next few minutes just blurred but I can say with certainty there was a rainbow of colors and sounds.
- First sound, running of tiny little feet so fast pushing a doll carriage careening out of control from her room and then onto the tile floor in the kitchen
- Second sound, the impact of Sweetie Pie’s head like a freight train into the edge of door jamb of the open porch door in the kitchen
- Third sound, a split, clear as day that was eerily like a watermelon being dropped on the floor
- Fourth sound, a horrible, blood curdling scream from my precious little girl’s mouth as she was catapulted flat on her back from the impact
- Fifth sound, the running water and the crashing plates at the kitchen sink as my husband who was washing the dishes heard the impact and instantly began screaming “Oh, my GOD” over and over as he turned white as a sheet at the sounds and sights of his little angel lying on her back just steps away from us and a faucet of bright red blood came pouring out of her head
- Sixth, the sound of my bare feet brushing the wood floor of the porch as they raced and came to rest next to my baby along with the boom, boom, boom sound of my pounding heart about to explode through my chest
- Seventh, the air being displaced as WonderBoy's exaggerated huge strides approached running from the bathroom dripping wet wrapped in a towel toward us…green with worry and a drowning in a river of tears pouring down his face at the sight of his blood covered baby sister in my arms.
- Eighth….the sound of my own voice echoing so loud in the house amid all the screams of my lovelies……direct, certain, unwavering, barking orders and instructions…moving all things into place while holding a white towel turned crimson over my screaming daughter's head while she lay in my arms and compressing ice to this gushing wound in her head. I was wondering who that was, that woman who hijacked my voice and my body because I was certain that I was standing still. She glided me on air through the house gathering the up the necessities and making many decisions. She kept telling everyone to remain calm. She was such a confident lady. I kept wondering how she knew where everything was and where everything had to go. I didn’t ask questions, though...I just followed her. I was glad to have her with me because I knew that I was too scared to speak, was paralyzed with fear and worry and I decided that I was just going to let her do what she needed to do and stay out of her way.
Within minutes we were laden with towels, ice, compresses, diaper bag, change of clothes, juice cup, cookies, cell phone, blanket and were strapped into our car and our way to the emergency room. JR, white as a ghost and running in circles was told by that woman's VOICE to get in the car and drive as I curled up next to my baby in her carseat and held that head for dear life.
Ten minutes later we arrived at the trauma center for help.
Patience has never been my strong suit but I do know when I can’t alienate certain people, whether I’m right or not, because there are SOME things that I just can’t do….like take my daughter’s pain away or stitch up her deeply split forehead when I am standing on the wrong side of the emergency room door. There was that VOICE again. She took over, adding a smile to my grimace frozen face. I heard her say, in my voice, “I have a 22 month old with a blunt force trauma head wound that is gushing blood. I’d like a CAT scan and a plastic surgeon, in that order.” The triage nurse looked at me and said, don’t worry, Mama, it doesn’t look that bad, you new mother’s always think the sky is falling…as she reached with her ungloved hand to touch my daughter’s bleeding forehead (at which moment I promptly whirled my baby away from her intercepting her hand from landing there)…I think a butterfly bandage will be just fine for that….there are 6 people ahead of you and I’m not going to cut you in the line.
Oh, you're not, huh? I have been blessed with a superpower. It's a look...or shall I say it is an entire paragraph, mood, feeling, statement, intensity and, well, a force unto itself all rolled into one. If it lands on someone, it can cause horrendous devastation and even a laser beam is inferior in precision. She was the first recipient of the LOOK that night. It didn't take her but a second to hear the beep, beep then the locking sound as the target was made and I knew as I saw her duck away that she was looking for refuge behind her little glass door to the waiting room. I saw her peek from behind the glass again as she felt the cold, icy wind wash over her body from the LOOK. Fear was prompting her to rethink her notion of cutting us in that line.
We were escorted to a triage bed in relatively short order as the gatekeeper fervently tried to avoid my gaze, or craze as the case may have been. Thankfully, Sweetie Pie was her old self; no vomiting, no passing out, no visible sign of massive headache, so the doctors all agreed that the CAT was not necessary. My sister and her 17 year old daughter so thoughtfully surprised JR and me there in the ER around 1AM and helped me take care of my anxious, rambunctious little girl….AND they helped to soothe JR, who was absolutely inconsolable at the sight of our daughter.
Because I had invoked a 7 letter word and refused to abandon it we waited and waited and waited, waited some more and then waited and waited and waited. And, then we waited some more.
P-L-A-S-T-I-C
At 3:30AM, the long awaited pediatric plastic surgeon finally arrived from another hospital and an hour, 5 syringes of pain meds injected directly into her teeny forehead and 40+ stitches over 3 layers of Sweetie Pie’s tiny little cranium…along with two nervous breakdowns (Sweetie’s and Papa’s) later we were on our way home.
Yes, I said FORTY…the big 4-0! And, that is precisely why when somebody put in charge as a gatekeeper in a lobby of an ER with an ungloved hand reaches out and tries to touch my child’s bleeding head says to me…."oh, that’s not that bad… a butterfly will do, NEXT”…..they get the ultimate, perfected, Haute Dagger Evil Eye AND the Idiots’ Delight Award for the Evening.
And so, my lesson to my daughter that night…
Listen to that Inner Voice in Troubling Times, it won’t steer you wrong
If something doesn't sound right, it isn't
AND
Better living through PLASTIC, my darling…………
The first picture was taken with my cell in the ER, even THIS crazy mamarazzi didn’t have the gumption to grab her Canon when that VOICE was moving us out with such purpose.
The others were taken yesterday when we changed SP’s bandage.
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