Survival of the Stitches!

Tonight Jeff and I can officially call ourselves seasoned parents: we survived a trip to Urgent Care for one of our sons.

It happened like this:

It was about 6:30 p.m. and Michael had just put on his pajamas. He'd had a busy week and weekend and was needing to go to bed early, says me. Apparently he didn't agree with this because he started that before bedtime rough housing thing that boys do with their fathers (at least mine do). I was putting away dishes in the kitchen and the boys and Jeff were in the living room.

All of a sudden I heard a loud thwack of head hitting solid surface. Immediately following was a loud, high-pitched scream, the one reserved only for serious hurts. I ran into the living room and saw Jeff holding Michael's head. His first instinct was to see if Michael's head was bleeding. Sure enough, it was.

"What happened?" I asked without raising my voice. Somehow I was not entering panic mode but instead was calm.

"Michael hit his head on the corner of the coffee table," Jeff replied.

"Murphy's Law," I said. "We haven't had a coffee table in the house since Michael was little for just this reason and 10 days after we get one someone gets hurt."

I was not experienced with head wound treatment but knew enough to find a spare cloth, wet it down, and put it on the back of Michael's head and apply pressure. After a few minutes I lifted the cloth to see the damage. What I saw was not good - a one-inch gash of broken skin on the back of Michael's head along with a lot of blood.

"Looks like a trip to the hospital for stitches," I said. Jeff agreed. Michael didn't.

"Noooooo!!!" Michael wailed. "I don't want to go to the hospital! I don't want to get stitches!"

Does anyone ever WANT to get stitches? Probably not. Michael doesn't do well with being hurt and has to have band-aids for little tiny paper cuts. The last time he had to have a shot at the doctor's office he hid under the table and I had to drag him out in order for him to get the shot.

I've never had stitches so I have no experience to go by as far as what happens, but I tried my best to assure Michael that it wouldn't hurt much and that we really needed to get his head fixed. Luckily for us we realized that we could go to the Urgent Care facility a mile down the road and bypass the ER experience.

"I'm scared Momma, I'm really scared," Michael said to me as I held the cloth against his head while Jeff drove.

"It'll be ok," I reassured him. "I'll be with you the whole time and hold your hand."

Despite this fact, he was pretty hysterical by the time the nurse took us back to the cot where he would get his stitches. I'm not the best at thinking on the fly, but I have to give myself a pat on the back because tonight I stood up to the challenge.

"How about if I tell you a story?" I asked him.

"Uh huh," he mumbled through his tears.

"Once upon a time," I began, "there was a little boy named Michael..." I don't know if it was the tone of my voice or if he really was enthralled by my stories (or maybe it was the 25 mg of Benedryl they gave him), but he calmed right down and remained that way while the nurse cut the hair around his cut and cleaned it, and through the doctor's assessment that he would indeed need 4 stitches.

We had plenty of time for stories too since we had to wait about 30 minutes for the Benadryl to take effect and the Lidocaine to numb his wound. By the time the doctor came in to stitch Michael up, he was pretty groggy. He only cried a little bit when the doctor gave him a couple shots of local anesthesia to numb him up. And he laid perfectly still for the stitches. Not even a peep.

So, 1 1/2 hours, $40, four Lego stickers, and two tired children later we said goodbye to the Urgent Care staff, thankful that we hadn't had to take a trip to the Emergency Room (for we would probably still be there) and thankful that the situation hadn't been much worse.

Nothing can prepare one for situations like these but I'm proud that Jeff and I were both mavericks through it all. No one passed out from the sight of blood or the gaping wound or the stitching of skin. We remained cool, calm, and collected. We survived.

Tomorrow, I'm afraid, will be a different story. That's when I get to tackle the fun task of washing the wound and putting salve on it. I'm sure that will be like trying to get a cat to take a bath. Maybe I can try the story trick again.

"Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Michael..."