Elise's First Trip to Urgent Care

I wrote about Carter's first trip to Urgent Care, read here, so I figured I had to do the same for Elise. Carter's first trip was at 3 years old. Elise's, unfortunately, was at 1.5 years old. I guess that's what happens when you are the second born and have such a rough natured older brother. My parents were in town this past weekend for the Corndog Challenge 5k. On Saturday evening they took all of us out for dinner. We were all sitting at the table after ordering and my dad decided to take Carter outside to play until our food arrived. Thomas got up to go with him so we sent Elise out too. Carter was behaving really well in the restaurant, especially for him, but Elise was being pretty difficult. I offered to go with them but they said that wasn't necessary so I happily stayed at the table. The rest of us were sitting and chatting when we saw my dad come rushing back into the restaurant with Elise. Then I saw Thomas come in but I didn't see Carter so I started to panic a little bit. Then I realized Thomas was holding onto Carter but he was just out of my eyesight. Thomas had Ty go outside and then he came in. He said that they were playing and Carter went up some stairs and found a large chunk of broken cement at the top. Thomas saw him reach down for the cement and yelled for him to stop right as he threw it over the side of the railing and onto the head of Elise who was standing at the bottom. The crazy part was that he said Elise didn't even cry. When dad came out of the bathroom with Elise I took a look at her head. The gash looked fairly deep but not very wide. It looked like the tip of the cement had pierced her skin. The "rock" must have hit her just perfectly to only break the skin and not cause any other injury. We all have very strong reactions to head injuries since Jeremy's accident so everyone was feeling a bit sick after hearing the story of what happened.

He gash, it's hard to see in this picture. The bruises are self inflicted from various falls.

I went outside to find Ty and Carter. Ty had taken Carter to the car and spanked him while I looked Elise over. I had Carter walk me over to the "rock" he had thrown so I could see it. We talked about how dangerous it is to throw things and how something like that could kill Elise if it hit her a certain way. I told him if he ever so much as picks up another rock he will immediately be spanked. Carter could tell by how everyone was acting that it was very serious but I think it was hard for him to understand he had hurt Elise since she didn't cry. When we got back inside our food had just arrived so we went ahead and ate. I felt sick to my stomach and didn't think I would be able to eat but once Elise started chowing down I was able to eat my food. When we were done eating Elise's head was still bleeding a little. Not enough to run down her forehead but enough that the cut wasn't scabbing up. There was talk of buying some of the skin glue to glue it ourselves but if she needed glue I wanted a doctor doing it. I knew from what they told me when they glued Carter's head that when it's further back in the hair they usually use staples so I was hesitant to take Elise just because I hated the thought of her getting a staple. Ultimately I decided I'd rather be safe than sorry so we headed to Urgent Care. I decided Carter needed to go with us so he could see how serious what he did to Elise was, plus why let him go home with Oma and Opa and have fun while Elise was at the doctor when it was his fault she was there. On the way I reminded Carter that the pediatric urgent care had slushees. I instructed him that if he was offered one he was to say, "No, thank you. We are here because I was naughty."

We walked into the urgent care and Elise was so happy, waving and saying hello to everyone she saw. Ty made Carter sit with him and I took Elise over to the toy area to play. You would never have guessed she had sustained a head injury less than an hour prior to our arrival. She sure wasn't acting like it. The only time she cried during the whole ordeal was when they cleaned her cut out with cold water. The doctor put one staple in to pull the skin together and get it to stop bleeding. No numbing, nothing, just used a little staple gun and pushed it on in. Elise didn't even flinch. She just held onto her shoes and fought us as we held her arms down, the little beast that she is! She definitely enjoyed her fruit punch slushee on the drive home. And she's been running through the house and climbing on everything just like nothing ever happened. We are staying away from playgrounds until she gets her staple out so it can heal before I have to worry about her climbing all the things at the playground again. I was impressed with what a tough cookie she is and I was thankful that Carter was so remorseful and seemed to understand the severity of what he did. He did pick up a rock yesterday and was immediately spanked. I'm hoping he doesn't pick one up ever again. That was more stress than I need in my life right now. No more head wounds for a good 6 months now, right?!

The staple on Elise's head.

I promise I didn't say this to Carter but I did laugh extra hard the next day when it showed up on my Facebook feed.