A Tale of Injuries and ERs
Nathan had his stitches out on Wednesday from his little Thanksgiving trauma drama. The PA who removed the stitches seemed to be pulling a little harder than is usually necessary, so I wasn't surprised to see that his index finger was a little red and swollen. There also seemed to be a little dark spot near the suture site,which kind of looked like a blood blister. The next day, the dark spot was gone, but the swelling was still there. By Friday evening, the swelling was present in the whole 2nd joint of the finger and the cut was looking very red. We re-checked it again yesterday morning and not only was it still red and swollen, but he was now not using the finger. So we trapsed off to the "mini ER" at the local urgent care clinic (which we have now found out does not have a great reputation in the local medical community) to have it looked at. There weren't many people there, and they called us in to a room after only about 30 minutes. I figured that we might get lucky and get in and out rather quickly. Ha! The PA who saw us this time seemed a bit timid in that he poked at Nathan's finger for a minute, said that it was probably infected and would need to be drained and that he would page the on-call hand surgeon. Then he also ordered some x-rays to make sure there wasn't a foreign body in there. Um, okay. Thank you for being thorough, and Nathan loved the "big camera" and the x-rays took all of 5 minutes. Then we sat around and waited for 3 hours. There was no foreign body, and the PA came back in and poked at the cut to see if it would magically open and release whatever was in there. Then he informed us that the hand surgeon had been called and they would call us at home to let us know what he said.
So, we left with a prescription for an antibiotic and went to the store to get it filled and get something for dinner. 20 minutes later when we got home, I attempted to make dinner and the PA from the clinic called, saying that the hand-surgeon wanted to see us tonight in the ER of University Hospital. I thanked him, and continued to make dinner for me and Paul (Nathan had wanted one of those "lunchables" with crackers and cheese, so there was no prep work.) The PA then called back and said that we shouldn't let Nathan eat in case the doctor needed to sedate him. OK, I yelled to Paul that we needed to go NOW, because we were all getting hungry and I knew that Paul and I couldn't eat, because then Nathan would want to. I was under the impression that the doctor was waiting for us, but after waiting for 3 hours in the waiting room, I realized my mistake. We were then called in to a gurney in the hallway, because they were out of rooms. After being seen by 1 pediatric resident, 2 attendings, 1 emergency medicine resident and 1 orthopedic resident, we were finally taken into a room to have the "infection" drained. The ortho doc said that he would "attempt" it with a local, but he was very sceptical that a 2 year old would allow himself to be subjected to that (especially at 10:45 pm with no nap and no dinner). Ahhhh, but he doesn't know my son. He did wimper just a little when the local was going in, but I think more from exhaustion than anything. The doctor tried to aspirate whatever was in there, but it turned out to be just blood. The finger started bleeding quite a bit (Nathan thought it was cool and funny that he left a bloodstain on the sheet on the gurney), and everyone was amazed that the "infection" was a simple hematoma. They wrapped his finger and told us to follow up with the hand surgeon this week.
So at around 11:45 we all arrived at home, had some dinner and watched Wall-E, one of Nathan's birthday presents (which we had planned to give him earlier in the day.) We had also planned to take him to Chuck E Cheese for his birthday today, but with all the "excitement" yesterday, wanting to keep his finger clean and the fact that we were all up so late that we couldn't possibly get there before the daily crowd, we figured we'd better skip it. Maybe next week.
So, we left with a prescription for an antibiotic and went to the store to get it filled and get something for dinner. 20 minutes later when we got home, I attempted to make dinner and the PA from the clinic called, saying that the hand-surgeon wanted to see us tonight in the ER of University Hospital. I thanked him, and continued to make dinner for me and Paul (Nathan had wanted one of those "lunchables" with crackers and cheese, so there was no prep work.) The PA then called back and said that we shouldn't let Nathan eat in case the doctor needed to sedate him. OK, I yelled to Paul that we needed to go NOW, because we were all getting hungry and I knew that Paul and I couldn't eat, because then Nathan would want to. I was under the impression that the doctor was waiting for us, but after waiting for 3 hours in the waiting room, I realized my mistake. We were then called in to a gurney in the hallway, because they were out of rooms. After being seen by 1 pediatric resident, 2 attendings, 1 emergency medicine resident and 1 orthopedic resident, we were finally taken into a room to have the "infection" drained. The ortho doc said that he would "attempt" it with a local, but he was very sceptical that a 2 year old would allow himself to be subjected to that (especially at 10:45 pm with no nap and no dinner). Ahhhh, but he doesn't know my son. He did wimper just a little when the local was going in, but I think more from exhaustion than anything. The doctor tried to aspirate whatever was in there, but it turned out to be just blood. The finger started bleeding quite a bit (Nathan thought it was cool and funny that he left a bloodstain on the sheet on the gurney), and everyone was amazed that the "infection" was a simple hematoma. They wrapped his finger and told us to follow up with the hand surgeon this week.
So at around 11:45 we all arrived at home, had some dinner and watched Wall-E, one of Nathan's birthday presents (which we had planned to give him earlier in the day.) We had also planned to take him to Chuck E Cheese for his birthday today, but with all the "excitement" yesterday, wanting to keep his finger clean and the fact that we were all up so late that we couldn't possibly get there before the daily crowd, we figured we'd better skip it. Maybe next week.