Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Harrison & The ER: A Natural Match

Sunday. 6:20p.m. Carolyn's (Grandma's) house.

Jake has a teddy bear that appears to be one of Jason's when he was small. It definitely had an early 80s vibe (and possibly smell) to it, but Jake had it and Harrison whined for it in jealousy.

"Harrison, do you want one?" Jake says. He heads from the living room to Grandma's antique toy closet with Harrison on his heels. Jason was in the kitchen helping Grandma cook dinner. I was watching "The Office" (Season 2) on DVD in the living room.

BOOM! I turn around to find Harrison face down on the bottom wooden stair as he was following Jake to secure an acceptable teddy bear replacement. Appears he lost his footing and bit it. I picked him up, calmly, until I realized his chin was spewing blood. I took him to the kitchen, ordered up some paper towels and ice and as Jason spun in circles three times trying to get his bearings, I realized this was no ordinary cut. It was a gash that probably needed stitches.

By the time we got Harrison into the car, the bleeding has slowed and he stopped crying, but I sat with him in the back seat trying to keep the ice on it. Ten minutes later we were in the ER of the hospital Jason was "borned" (Carolyn's term) in, where the first question the receptionist asked me is, "Has he been here before?"

What? He's two. Should he have a record by now?

Two and a half hours later, Harrison was seen by two med students, a doctor to approve their diagnosis and the discharge nurse. The med students teamed up to essentially glue Harrison's chin together with dermabond and after a couple of entertaining rounds of the Hokey Pokey, the discharge nurse let us go.

Could Harrison have had stitches? Yes.
Could Harrison have healed virtually fine if we'd stayed at Grandma's for dinner and put our 2 1/2 hours to better use? Probably.
Did we overreact? Maybe....we didn't think so until the Doctor and the med students kept calling his cut "superficial." I almost asked them to stop using that term. I would have preferred "shallow" or a "minor laceration".
Will Harrison be visiting the ER again? I think the odds are yes, he will develop a record somewhere where they'll know his name when we walk in the door.

1 comment:

Cori said...

Note: On 7/7/7, Harrison pulls Bailey's chest of drawers down on top of himself as he is using the bottom drawers as stairs. No ER visit this time, but it was close as the chest was lightweight and the piggy bank full of coins missed him completely. Oh dear.