e.r. visit (warning: long story)

Eli and I were having a nice Friday afternoon. We ran our normal errands for the day and were looking forward to coming home to get some energy out and run in the sprinkler. We came home and I unloaded and put away the food we bought. Then I began the process of getting Eli to go upstairs with me so we could get our swimsuits on. He was having fun using his little bat and plastic ball to play, as he calls it, 'tennis'. He knows what baseball is and he knew that baseball was not what he was playing. He would actually bounce the ball off of the bat and then exclaim 'TENNIS!!!' and run after the ball. He is such an aficionado for any sports at all. I thought this was cute so stopped to watch a little more before I would scoop him up to go upstairs. Looking back, I wish I would have just scooped him up. As he was running excitedly after the ball he hit, he tripped over, presumably his own feet because nothing was in his path, and did a face plant against one of his plastic yellow chairs. Here is a picture of those chairs with Eli and Foster in happier times.

I heard the loud 'thomp!' too and knew that it wasn't good. He cried for about a minute fairly hysterically and there was blood gushing everywhere. Luckily, the good old standby we use in order to get Eli to calm down worked this time: ice. You see, Eli is very clumsy. He always has been. Most toddlers are, but I believe that God gave him a little extra dose of it, as He gave to me as well. If you need proof, I have many stories from high school I tell that proves this point. And maybe I can blog about those too.....but I digress. :) So falling has become an art to Eli and when he does take a tumble, he usually ends up hitting his face and/or mouth on whatever he falls onto. Then we give him ice in a sandwich bag and 5 minutes later, he is good to go, albeit with a fat lip or bruise somewhere.

At the mention of ice, Eli stopped crying and said 'ice, pwease?' over and over. I took that as a good sign. So I gave him ice and tried to stop the bleeding at the same time. But the wound kept bleeding and bleeding and I couldn't even see the actual wound to see how bad it was. After about 10 minutes, many paper towels, 2 bags of ice and after bending his fat lip up as far as I could, I saw it.......it was a vertical cut from the beginning of his gums up about a centimeter into the gums. I pushed up on the gums on the right side of the cut and LIFTED HIS GUMS like the flap of a curtain!!!! Under the gum was dark red blood pouring out. This scared me, to say the least. I tried to wiggle his teeth on either side to see if they were loose and they weren't, which was a relief. I then proceeded to call any pediatric dentist in the area. The first one I called was closed. The second one was open and when I told her the problem, she exclaimed "ooooooo" and it was at that point that I thought, if there was any confusion about it, we definitely have something bad here. She told me to go to the E.R. so I called Chad and told him to meet me there and off we went to Chester County Hospital.

On the way to the hospital, I was thinking that he would need stitches. I could not bear to think about watching my child endure this, as he would be screaming and in pain from the numbing needles, watching them stitch his little gums together, the pain he would endure afterwards....ugh. It got me upset to think about these things. When we got to the hospital, he was running around the waiting room like a.....like a.....like a typical toddler I guess. He was making the nurses laugh, but also driving us crazy trying to touch very dangerous hospital devices.

After about an hour and half, we were checked in, treated and diagnosed: no stitches. YAY! The wound was healing itself, the doctor told us. And it was not too deep and not bleeding anymore, so we were good to go! They gave Eli ibuprofen and a Popsicle, which he proceeded to use as a drumstick on the hospital bed.....yikes. Any other kid would love a Popsicle, but my finicky eater of a son wanted to use it as a toy. :) So we were in and out of the E.R. in under 2 hours......Chester County Hospital rocks! :)

So below is the day after picture of what his wound looks like. It looks MUCH BETTER than yesterday, so that is a blessing. But just picture me being able to lift up the right side gum of that cut and see dark red, almost black blood gushing out......oh the horror!! But God took care of him and all is well. :)