Day 297

It was inevitable... you take a rambunctious 6-year old boy and a playscape and there is likely to be a visit to the emergency room. I'm surprised we made it this long.

I took Dominic and Anna to the park this afternoon. I had intended to go to the park by our community center so I didn't even take my purse, but our park is closed for renovations, so we headed over to Springwoods Park about 15 minutes away. We had only been there about 10 minutes, Anna had just gotten on the swing, and Dominic was climbing on the playscape when I heard him scream.

I ran over to him and he was holding the back of his head and really crying, so much so that he couldn't talk yet to tell me what happened and I didn't see him fall. I looked at the back of his head and I saw blood, then investigated further and saw about 1-inch long gash that looked pretty deep. Mommy instincts kicked and I swooped him up, hollering loudly, "Does anyone have any towels? He's bleeding!" A mom pulled out a disposable diaper from her diaper bag and asked if it would work. Yup! I opened it up and smooshed on his head having him hold it over his ears. Anna was frozen on the swings. I knew I had to take him to the ER, the gash was just big enough that I thought it would need stitches. Thankfully a nice man carried Dominic to the van so I could coax Anna to come with us. I called my mom and asked her to grab my purse and meet us at the hospital.

Dominic calmed down pretty quickly and we got to the ER within 10 minutes. He had stopped actively bleeding and it didn't look that bad. Mom took Anna home and we waited to be triaged. And waited. And waited. They were packed! It took over about an hour and 25 minutes for Dominic to be initially screened and the nurse said he's probably need 2 staples. Gulp, staples?!?

Another 30 minutes pass then we are taken to Quick Care (ha, that's an oxymoron). The doc took a quick look and said it was our call. She could put in a couple of staples after numbing it or I could commit to washing it with soap and water twice a day and gooing it up with Neosporin. Guess which option Dominic voted for? She said that the scar may end up bigger without staples but it's at the base of that knobby part of his skull so it won't show.

So we are home, both kids are asleep, I relayed what happened to Curtis who just woke up a bit ago (it's Monday morning in India), and I'm sitting here now very, very grateful to my mom and equally grateful that Dominic didn't suffer a concussion or a worse injury. The laceration is not closing up yet and it has started bleeding again a couple of times. There is no way to put a bandage on it and I tried a butterfly closure but it just stuck to his hair. So I'm not sure how it's going to go at school tomorrow. He is so hyper that I'm worried he'll bust it open again but we'll deal with that if we have to. I guess I can always take him back in for those staples if we need to.

My sweet little, brave pickle. I love him so.



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