My brother recently had his first trip to the ER with one of his kids. It's pretty impressive considering his track record with injuries that his kids waited so long. We were not so lucky. Little Man had his first visit Friday night.
It started innocently enough with an accident at daycare during cleanup. Someone got a little too excited putting blocks away and launched one. Little Man was either directly in the path or walked directly into the path of the lobbed block. It pegged him right below the eye. They called me to give me a heads up but he was fine. Half an hour later they call me back, right as I am walking out the door to pick him up. He wasn't quite himself and was blinking a lot so they pulled him out of class to keep an eye out of him. I was working from home so I was there in 2 minutes. He was crying when I walked in but it seemed more from being yanked from class then from pain. I thought nothing of it and took him home.
Half an hour later and he's still crying. He's also holding his eye, won't open it and won't let me near it. He asked to go to bed. I called the doctor. He tells me to give him some Tylenol and wait an hour. He also gives me the run down on every possible problem from bad to Holy Shit Scary. I choose to ignore the Holy Shit Scary. I don't do Holy Shit Scary well. 10 minutes after the Tylenol he fell asleep in my arms but spent the time wincing or crying in his sleep.
An hour later John gets home from work. I was waiting for him so we could tag-team the munchkin, pry his eye open and make sure we didn't have any Holy Shit Scary going on. Thankfully Little Man decided to open his eye on his own and it looked perfectly normal to me. 10 minutes later he's screaming in pain. Little Man gets tossed in the car and we head to the ER.
INOVA Springfield - ya'll rock! I'm used to the Pediatrician's office where they ask us to hold him down. Not at the ER. A nurse and EMT came in to do the dirty deed. Love them! Ok, so it didn't hurt that the EMT was incredibly cute. Probably all of 20 but age is just a number right? Oh poor John. He's having a small freak out over his son being held down and screaming his heart out and his wife is checking out the EMT. Although Little Man did his best Banshee impression ever more out of fear than pain, they didn't flinch. Hell my ears were ringing. I think they still are. These guys - nothing. The doctor put some drops in his eye and pulled out the black light. The drops glowed neon green. It was incredibly cool.
Yeah, my kid is screaming in fear and I'm shushing him, not to calm him because I feel horrible for him but because I'm trying to get him to stay still long enough for me to see because I think it's kinda cool. Right up until I see the scratch in the middle of his eye. Well that explains the non-stop crying for the last 4 hours. Corneal Abrasion right smack dab in the middle of his eye.
The numbing agent did its job and in no time Little Man is up and about taking Cute Kid to a whole new level. While we wait for the RX and discharge papers, Little Man hams it up. Ah, my son is back. We get him back in the car and he finally conks out. We get him upstairs to our room. The plan is to let him sleep with us so we can pin his arms to the side. Ah yes, the delusion of planning with a child. I still live in a delusional world.
We get his coats, shoes, hat and mittens off and that's it. I put him in a nighttime pull up while at the ER. The thought of grabbing his pjs slipped my mind yet again. One of these days I'll think that far in advance. The tears start again but he never truly wakes. While I rock him, John searches on line for a 24 hour pharmacy near us. We have a RX for Tylenol with codeine. I never thought to ask them for a dose while at the hospital. I should have as we are SOL and will have to wait until the AM to get it.
I finally get him down and he immediately takes up my side of the bed. I leave him with John and head to the couch but I can't sleep. It doesn't take long for the cries to start again so back upstairs I go. I end up rocking him again so I tell John to hit the couch. One of us needs our sleep. I'll stay with him. I end up sleeping in 1/5 - 2 hour intervals. John ends up on the floor next to the bed. Little Man ends up only sleeping until 8 AM.
We dragged today but Little Man rocked it. No more tears except when it comes time to put in the eye drops. Holy Scary Shit has nothing on trying to pry open a screaming 3-year old's eye. He didn't nap today so we put him down early to bed. It is currently 9:48 EST. He just stopped talking/singing a couple of minutes ago. I have no idea how he does it.
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