Stitches

Monday night I saw a horrible preview of what the rest of my life with 4 boys might be like.  We had our first stitches.

Beckett likes to help me cook although he won't ever eat any of the things we make.  So Monday night he was draining a can of olives for me for our chef salads.  I'm sure you can all see where this is going.  He asked if he could look inside the can.  I said yes, but hang on just a minute because I was stirring our homemade croutons on the stove.  Then I heard "Ow, Ow!!" and crying.  And I said, "Don't move I'm coming!"  And then there were a lot louder ows and screaming and blood dripping.  He pulled his finger out of the can slicing a nice flap open on the lid.  I rinsed his finger off in case salty olive juice was stinging him, grabbed a towel, started applying pressure and picked him to run over to our neighbors to see if any of them could sit with the other kids while I took him to the wonderful PM Pediatrics.  Just as I was running around the corner with Beckett in my arms our neighbor pulled up and asked if anything was wrong and could she help.  I said yes so she came over to my crazy house in disarray with a messy, blood spattered kitchen and two diaper clad babies roaming the living room floor.

Beckett only had shorts on (it was in the low 70's.  Hooray for spring.) so I grabbed a jacket to throw on him and we jumped in the car.  The nice lady in front of me at the pediatric instacare said we could go first since my shirt was smeared with blood and so was Beckett's chest.  However the receptionist kept trying to get me to put his jacket on him.  "He's freezing." she kept telling me.  I kept telling her, no he wasn't he was shaking because was scared and hurt because he just sliced the h#$l out of his finger.  And I could get one arm in, but it didn't seem worth it to take the pressure off his finger in order to smear the inside of his jacket sleeve with blood when I could just drape it around his shoulder.  Luckily about 20 minutes after the cut we were with a nurse who was irrigating the wound and promising Beckett he got to keep the squirt gun she was cleaning him with.

Beckett did really great.  He cried of course, because it hurt, but he only tried to pull his hand away once. Watching them wiggle the syringe around his finger trying to numb it up looked agonizing so I don't blame him.  We kept him home from school on Tuesday, but he was back today and going strong.  Now if I can just keep him from doing things like making mud and sticking his hand in it, which he thought was a good idea yesterday.  Maybe this springlike weather is a bad idea.  He keeps wanting to go outside and dirty up his bandages.  We'll go back on Tuesday and have the stitches taken out.  And I hope that it is many years before I have to deal with this again.

Resting at home after the ordeal.

Displaying his bandage hand.

Beckett's attempt to take a picture of his blood smeared all over my shirt.

Displaying his wound as he specifically asked for a picture of his stitches.

Here's a nice, gross pricture.