Friday, January 25, 2013

Rough Night

Scott decided to make things interesting for us last night. He was a little tired yesterday afternoon so he took a nap. The big problem with kids taking naps is that they don't like to go to bed, and that always causes problems. Typically when he takes a nap he stays up a little bit later or sits in his bed and read books until he falls asleep. Last night he was kind of fussy/tired so we tried to have him read books. Scott really didn't like that idea so he started climbing around on his bed, unfortunately, things didn't turn out so well.
A little bit after 9 o'clock I heard a thud from upstairs, and then I heard Amber's voice shouting my name. I raced upstairs to see Amber holding Scott and blood literally flowing out of his mouth. There was a trail of blood on the floor, and a bunch of blood on Amber's shirt and hands. Amber may have felt pretty frantic at the time, but to be honest she handled it very well. At first he thought he knocked out some teeth or bit through his lip, but when we got the bleeding to stop we saw the big gash in his tongue and decided to take into the hospital.
Unfortunately, we decided to take him to the closest emergency room. In hindsight it would've been smarter to take into the pediatric hospital was another 20 minutes away, since after all is done, that is where we ended up taking him anyway. The first emergency room had a long wait, and when Amber and Scott finally got in they didn't have the things needed to take care of the pediatric emergency like Scott's problem. At first we thought we might be overreacting since most tongue problems I left alone to heal by themselves. And after our visit to the emergency room we realized it was a little bit worse than we thought. At the first hospital they thought Scott needed about three stitches to fix his tongue, but they didn't have a bite block to help him keep his mouth open. When we took him to the pediatric emergency room the doctor took one look and said she needed to get the ENT to take this. Finally, at about three in the morning they took into the OR intubated him and put two layers of stitches (about 11 total) into his tongue. After that things went smoothly. Scott wasn't too excited when he woke up. He didn't really like having his tongue numb. He didn't get much rest of the hospital, but he was a trooper and he got released from the hospital around lunchtime.
Fortunately we have good friends in town they came over to our house and watched our other children through the night. It was kind of a tricky situation manage since our van was in the shop, but it all worked out in the end. The girls were very concerned for their little brother. They didn't like seeing him sad. Sammi was even kind enough to give her special necklace that she got a school that day to Scott so that he could have something nice when he went to the hospital. Her necklace made him very happy since it was a special flashing ball necklace.
All in all it was exciting night, but not exciting enough that I would want to do it again. I'm pretty sure if you asked Amber she would say the same thing especially since she braved the first hospital all by herself.

2 comments:

Jenni said...

Oh poor buddy! That all sounds horrifying!!

C said...

Oh, little man! Poor guy!

We had a similar event a few months ago...it's NO fun! I've learned my lesson and ALWAYS go to the pediatric ER, even if it's farther away and more expensive! It just seems to go a little more smoothly..

Good luck with the recovery! Awesome job Amber!