We had just gotten back from a nice long jog with the whole family, Bailey and Milo included, and Ethan was messing around in the entryway looking outside and being silly. He tripped on the rug, or over his feet (his feet seem to have a mind of their own sometimes), and fell face first into the corner of the baseboard, cutting his forehead open. It made a pretty good "dent" and started bleeding right away. I grabbed a kitchen towel, Derrick grabbed an ice pack and after getting a good look I knew it needed a few stitches. So we hopped in the car and off we went. By the time we got into the car and were on our way, the bleeding had stopped (thank goodness because Ethan didn't want me anywhere close to his forehead to keep ice or a towel on it) and he was finished crying.
When we got to the ER they moved us to the back and a med student came in to look at the laceration. She felt that it needed stitches and was going to have the ER doc take a look at it just to make sure. The doctor came in and cleaned off the cut (this was not a very fun experience for Ethan) and said that it would need a few stitches. They were going to use some Lat-Gel (cotton ball soaked in numbing medicine taped to his forehead) to numb the area so we would have to wait for an hour to get that to take effect, and then they would stitch it.
So we waited, and Ethan was hungry and crabby so the wait was not very pleasant. They brought in a DVD player and put The Fox and The Hound in to watch (since he likes dogs) and we sat and tried to focus on that. (Derrick and I both commented after leaving the ER about how sad that movie was, I didn't remember it being so sad and depressing as a child.)
The doctor came back in with all of her gear and they started to get him ready for stitches. They wrapped him in a sheet to restrain his hands to his body and he instantly got angry! It was very difficult watching him so angry and ticked off, we tried bubbles and songs but he was not interested. A few times he relaxed, but most of the time he was all out screaming and trying to fight. Poor baby.
The doctor put in 4 stitches (two at the top of the V and two at the bottom) and they put a band-aid over it for our trip home. As soon as she let him up from the table, he stopped crying and was ready to leave, if it wasn't for the band-aid and the tear stained face, you would have thought that nothing was wrong with him! It makes be feel a little better to know that he was mostly crying because of being restrained and not because he was in pain... but I still felt terrible for not preventing his fall in the first place, let alone putting him through the "torture" of having stitches.
As soon as we got home Derrick went around the house duct-taping all the corners that Ethan could get hurt on, not very attractive, but it will do. We ate dinner, got PJ's on and Ethan went to bed around 9:30PM.
So, Ethan is healing well, and the stitches come out on Wednesday. I think he forgot about what even happened, and he is back to his normal self, climbing, running and almost falling down a few times here and there. He is becoming very independent and LOVES walking around outside in the grass and on on the sidewalk. He doesn't realize that if he gets going too fast and falls down it is going to really hurt... I guess that will be the next owie he gets, but hopefully it won't include a trip to the ER!
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