Adam's ER Adventure

Yesterday I was sitting on the couch, enjoying a break before I started the evening grind and I heard a terrible scream. It's amazing how fast that mom adrenaline kicks in man. I ran up the stairs and saw Adam sitting on the floor next to a chair with his back to me. When I first heard the scream I thought he had got his hand stuck in Jake's desk because there is a tiny gap just the perfect size for a little toddler hand to barely fit in and I'm pretty constantly worried about that but when I saw him on the floor, I calmed down for a second. Until I saw how badly it was stuck in the chair. I pulled it out of the chair and the tip of his finger (maybe a little more than half way to his first knuckle) flopped over and the blood started gushing. Gushing guys. For reals. I grabbed the tip, straightened it out and just held it while I started to freak out. Some people can stay calm in this kind of situation, ie Jake, but not this girl. I was looking around trying to find something to cover his hand with but since I was washing our bedding there wasn't even a blanket in our room. I went through a series of thoughts/plans on how we could get Jake home fast to help me deal with this and then I realized that *I* needed to do this. (Seriously not a calm person guys. Plus Adam was crying and we were both covered in blood. Not so good.) I grabbed Adam, ran downstairs, grabbed a bunch of napkins and called my neighbor. (Thank you so much to the Miller's for helping out, I don't think I could've done the ER with all the littles) Because she is awesome, Tiffany walked over and took Natalie and Mikey back to her house and then called Jake for me (because I'm not so good with the talking on the phone and driving) As I was driving I thought to myself, do I go to the ER or can I use the instacare clinic? We don't really take our kids to the doctor more often than for immunizations so I wasn't sure what the instacare could do. So what's a girl to do? I called my dad. I knew Jake would tell me to just go to the clinic because I knew that there was no way he would believe how bad the cut was. My dad told me to go to the clinic and if it was too much for them, go to the ER. Uhm, duh Meredith. I could've figured that out if I could've just calmed down. Because at this point I was crying and shaking. Shaking for two reasons- one the adrenaline and two, all I had eaten by this point in the day was my morning cereal and a Graham cracker Natalie shoved in my mouth. Adam was still freaking out in the back saying over and over again between cries "Mama, I hurt my finger. It's hurts." I realized my freaking out was only adding to his so I took a few deep breaths and started singing him his favorite songs. No joke, once I calmed down he stopped crying. Like within seconds. We got to the clinic, still all covered in blood, Adam holding a red soaked napkin on his finger, both with tear streaked faces and I'm sure it looked so dramatic. The receptionists all jumped up, got wet ones to clean us up, stickers for Adam and called a nurse out front to look at it and tell us if we needed to go to the ER. This is when I really realized that Jake not believing how bad it was was in fact the rule, not the exception. Including me. The nurse took off the napkin and all the receptionists and the two nurses were all like oh wow it *really is* bad. And I looked at it again and saw how gross it was and that the finger was being held on by a skin flap. I was suddenly so amazed by Adam. He was sitting there, not even really crying, just watching the nurses. They all commented on how tough he was. Jake and I have always thought our kids were pretty tough, especially Adam but I always assumed it was just that irrational parental pride you know. "I made you and love you so you're the best/cutest/smartest/toughest/etc. ever" but after yesterday, my belief that Adam is tougher than average has been validated.
Anyways, we met up with Jake, who is perfectly calm and I can just tell that he thinks I'm overreacting because I do that. I'm seriously such a spaz about the kids in pain because I have the pain tolerance of... something that has a very low tolerance. I cry when Natalie steps on my toe haha. It shouldn't even be called a tolerance, it's an insult to the word really. But luckily, the kids seem to have Jake's tolerance not mine. We got to the ER, they check us in, all the while telling us how amazing it is that Adam isn't crying. Really Adam thought the quick bandaging the nurse at the clinic put on was so cool and wanted to show everyone. Everyone kept being like oh no, did you hurt your finger and Adam just gave them a blank stare because obviously he cared more about the red tape and gauze then the gushing wound. The nurse opened the bandage and was like oh wow, that's bad and Jake was shocked. He looked at me and was like "baby I totally thought you were exaggerating. That's really bad." Yeah I know. It was terrifying. They started calling it a near amputation which I didn't love and were talking about tendon damage, broken bones, and stitches. I was so devastated for my little guy. And because I hadn't eaten and am pregnant, it made me a little faint so I couldn't even hold him while they worked. (The nurse wouldn't let me. She was like we don't want anything happening to you so just sit over here, we'll take good care of him) Jake did it which was great but I wish I could've been there, cuddling my boy. I realize that's more about me than Adam though so it's okay. He knew I was there which counts I think. The doctor came in and looked at it and told us they were going to freeze it, xray it and then stitch it up. He was going to lose his fingernail but that would grow back in a few months. So it started. Adam hated the shot to freeze his finger but after it took he was back to his energetic, happy self. He wanted to get up, run around, play with his finger, you know, be a two year old boy. The xray showed a tuft fracture which is apparently pretty insignificant. It was just the tip of his bone broke off and there is nothing to be done about it, it just corrects itself once they stitch the finger back on. So they soaked it for like 10 minutes, put a little turniquet (how do you down that word!?) on it, took his fingernail off, and stitched it up. And Adam *watched*. The entire time. I think he actually liked to watch it. I didn't watch but Jake said it was making him a little nauseous, apparently it was really nasty. The doctor told us about how they normally need someone to hold the kid, sometimes even sedate them so it was amazing that Adam just chilled there. He didn't pull away once. Someone even said he was best pediatric patient he'd ever seen. We're very proud haha. So the tech bandaged it up for us and we left. We went back to the clinic to pick up Jake's car and I noticed that Adam had pulled the dressing off his finger. So we went into the clinic and they redressed it for us because they put a special kind of dressing on first, zeroform or something like that and I wasn't sure if it'd be okay to not have that. The nurse was awesome and covered his finger and wrist with coban and then put another bandage on top of that so if he does try to take it off again, or rather when he tries to take it off again, I'll have a better chance of catching him time.
We have to leave the bandage on for 5 days and in 10 days we go get the stitches out. As for now, we just give him Tylenol and ibuprofen as often as we can to try and fight the pain, which so far is a losing battle (note, I'm writing this at 6 in the morning, we normally sleep till at least 8 but Adam woke up needing medicine)
Once again,  thank you so much to Tiffany and Ty for taking our kids, it was so great to not worry about them in the ER with us for those couple of hours. Adam is a trooper and honestly, probably handled the whole thing better than his mom. :)

Thanks for reading!