Daniel's head cracking experience was in my preblogging
days. He was in first grade. He slipped on some black ice on the playground at
school and whacked his head on the blacktop. The school called me and when I
arrived I discovered that his skin had just popped right open. The wound looked
almost round it was yawning so widely. So off to the urgent care we went and he
ended up with a hand full of stitches. I don't remember how many, but he's got
a scar. Since I wasn't blogging then, I was not as macabre about taking
pictures of injured children so the most famous head shot we have is the one
taken in primary a couple of weeks after the incident. It is the one they used
all year on bookmarks, handouts, the bulletin board, etc. Don't you just dig
the Spider-Man bandaid?
Daniel-Jan. 7, 2008
Matthew's Humpty Dumpty moment happened when he was 2
1/2. I was a dedicated blogger by then so the whole nerve wracking incident was
well documented.
Matthew-Oct. 16, 2009
So who is the third head wound recipient, you may ask?
Take a guess. You have a 50% chance of being right. You might guess that Nathan
has joined his brothers in the mushed head club...but you would be wrong.
Yup. My not quite but so so close to 2 year old is the
winner, although I can't say this is a prize that one should aspire to earn.
Last night Kevin and I were downstairs chatting when we heard a thump from
upstairs. Immediately following that, Nathan starting shrieking, "Dad!
Dad!" It was the sound of sheer panic which meant, of course, that I
immediately began to go into panic mode. Kevin ran up the stairs with me close
behind, scenarios of horror already running through my mind. We found Nathan
and Malia on the floor in the kitchen, both crying pretty hysterically. Malia
had a gash and a huge dent that looked suspiciously like the sharp edge of the
counter on her forehead. Kev headed off to the instacare with Malia since I was
in no shape to drive safely just then.
Just because I know I haven't mentioned it yet, Kevin
started a new job two weeks ago which means we have had a change in insurance.
The new insurance cards have not arrived yet so I got on the Internet, found
the necessary info and texted it to Kev. At that point I was awfully glad that
I had spent three hours earlier in the day making phone calls and making sure
we has access to the website and the temporary cards.
Once that task was done, my attention turned to Nathan.
He was a wreck. We have to remind him frequently that he is Malia's brother and
not her parent so that might give you an idea of how much he dotes on her. He
was absolutely devastated that he had hurt her, so that was when I started
trying to figure out what had happened. It seems that Nathan had been helping
Malia wash her hands. When he was getting her down off the stool (and then
flying her around because it is fun) he tripped, on his shoelaces he thinks,
and fell. However, he was so panicky about Malia that he didn't realize that he
had a big goose egg on his forehead and his knee was swollen. In fact, he
doesn't even remember hitting his head because he was so focused on Malia. It
wasn't until ten or fifteen minutes after Kev had rushed out the door that
Nathan realized his head hurt. So there was need of some reassurance that it
had been an accident and that everything would be okay. And we applied some ice
to his head since by then he realized he had quite a headache.
Kev kept me updated regularly and the outcome was that
her brain didn't actually get mushed at all and her gash was shallow enough
that they were able to just clean it and glue it closed. As per instructions we
watched her closely for about four hours after the incident and all seemed just
as it should be. She was actually pretty pleased because she got to stay up late and watch "Tangled."
This morning Malia woke up acting as if nothing had changed and all was well until she decided to pick at the dermabond on her head. She said, "Owie." I looked over and realized that she had picked half the glue off her head and it was bleeding again. After a couple of phone calls to our friendly neighborhood healthcare providers, I was headed back to the instacare so they could clean and reseal the wound. Luckily for us, everything looked good enough that they decided to just clip off the section of dermabond that she had picked off and put steri-strips on it. They used lots of adhesive and lots of steri-strips so hopefully she won't be able to pick those off as well.
Malia did great with all the medical care. She didn't cry
or fight and they didn't have to strap her down or anything. And she clearly has no lingering negative affects other than the cut. I think I'm more
traumatized by the whole thing than she is...
