Visit to the ER

Well, we lasted nearly four years without a visit to the ER, but all good things must come to an end. This morning, we were at our friends' house and Jack was jumping on the trampoline* in their backyard. All of a sudden, I heard him screaming and ran to find him with a cut lip and blood everywhere. We cleaned it up as best we could and then headed over to the quickest Urgent Care center.

After a bunch of nonsense with our insurance - do NOT get me started - we ended up at the Children's Hospital Emergency Room. I could tell Jack really didn't want to be there. He kept telling me that his owie was ok, that it would get better soon, and that it didn't really hurt that much. There was some concern that we might have to put him under sedation or general anesthesia to stitch up the cut, but in the end, they just gave him a local anesthesia.

Jack was very brave. The wrapped him up on this papoose board to keep his arms down. We told him that it was just like Violet's Woombie that she sleeps in. They had to inject lidocaine into his lip to numb it, and he cried a little during that. They cleaned up the wound with saline water, which he didn't know at first he didn't have to hold in his mouth. When they told him he could spit it out, he did immediately - all over the bed sheet. Oops. That ended up being the part of the experience that he has talked about the most. "Why did I have to have that ocean water in my mouth?" He did great when they stitched him up. Thankfully, they used dissolvable sutures, so we won't have to go back to get them out.

Aside from the "ocean water," the worst part of the whole ordeal was that he wasn't allowed to eat. They wanted him to have not ingested anything for four hours prior to the procedure, just in case they had to sedate him. Poor little guy was so hungry. He couldn't understand why they had vending machines with food in the waiting room if he wasn't allowed to eat. After it was all over, they gave him a purple Popsicle, and that helped.

Violet was great throughout the day. She hardly fussed at all, even though I could tell she was getting really tired. She catnapped a little in the car and in my arms, but the hospital is no fun for anybody.

Once we came home, we gave Jack a huge dinner of mac n cheese - and ourselves a big shot of vodka. (For some reason, Jack has gotten it in his head that he wants to have mac n cheese for dinner 10 days in a row. He is currently on day 4... I think.) And then we went out for an ice cream sundae at Baskin Robbins.

It was a looong day, but both the kids were such troupers. (And it is still by far not the worst September 11 I've ever had.) Hopefully, this is our last ER visit for a long, long time.

* Jack LOVES to jump. He is always jumping on the bed or the couch, whatever has any bit of spring in it. We keep warning him that it's not safe to jump on our furniture, that he could fall and get hurt. We tell him, "If you want to jump, go jump on the trampoline." It figures that he gets hurt while doing exactly that.