Poor Baby Nam

Well, Sam has had his first trip to the ER at the ripe old age of 11 months. Poor little guy's mommy closed his left ring finger tip in the laundry room door and almost amputated it! Sam is such a trooper. After the initial shock of pain, he calmed down very quickly and just went with whatever we needed to do without much fuss. He did get tired of us holding his hand for 4 hours and he was terribly hungry after not eating for 11 hours (and he only got a few syringes of nasty blue gatorade when he did get something), but all in all he was the best patient Children's ER has seen in a long time!

I was throwing something away in the laundry room because that is where we have to keep the garbage since Sam has decided that the garbage can is his toy box (yuck!!). I heard the little thuds of his crawling toward me on the hardwood. My mind said back up and close the door quickly. I did not turn around to see that he had made it to the door and put his hand on the jamb to pull up. Critical mistake!! I felt the resistence too late for that tiny little fingertip~the edge of the door just cut right through it just below the nailbed I think (it is still swollen and stitches everywhere so can't really tell too much). I got a quick look between snatching him up and wrapping a towel around it and it looked really bad to me. I screamed for James and then Mommy adrenaline took over.

Tender mercies from above~I have my ped's cell phone number (this was about 4:40pm), and I have a great friend and neighbor. The doctor said Children's ER is the only place that could handle it. I called my friend and said "can I bring you my 3 oldest children" (panicked, shaky voice). She said "I'll come get them". That's it, she did not mention that she was childless for the evening and had commitments, she just showed up, packed them up and took them with her (then brought them home and put them to bed and hung out until 11pm). What a blessing!

After a 45 minute drive to downtown Birmingham Sam was triaged before we could even sign in and was immediately taken to a room. The doctor came in within 10 minutes. Niether the triage nurse nor the ER doc were overly concerned about the severity of the laceration. It didn't look so bad after having pressure on it for an hour. We were impressed and got a little too happy too quickly. All of a sudden everything stopped. They got a trauma and apparently the whole city came in right after us. After a while he had an x-ray to confirm that the tiny little bone in his fingertip was broken. Once the trauma was taken care of, they decided to call in a plastic surgeon so as not to tie up 3 docs in one room because Little Man had to be sedated and you have to have the surgeon, the treating doc and the attending for that. Finally at 8:30 we met the surgeon, a plastic surgeon on the hand team no less!!, and they got busy.

I held Sam as they sedated him. Only one word can describe this scene~DISTURBING! The drug they used knocks you out quickly but you don't close your eyes. So the doc pushed the drug and Sam was looking around then suddenly stopped and felt kind of stiff. As I moved him off me to the bed with his eyes open and his arms still raised (the dr was moving his fingers around in front of Sam's face and he was reaching for them) the only thing I could think was that he looked like a taxidermied Baby Sam.

After the procedure, both docs that were still in the room when we cam in admitted that the injury was much more significant than they thought once they cleaned it up. We finally left about 10:00 with a club-handed, hungry, tired but patched up baby. As hungry as he was he fell asleep about a block from the hospital and did not wake up until 3:30. He has done remarkably well with all this. He has given no indication of pain, the badages don't bother him or slow him down, and he has figured out how to eat one-handed. It's all good to Sam! I have never felt so blessed to live in one place ever. I've always thought it was a good idea to live close to a Children's Hospital if you have kids, but it is a requirement for us (Eli has had us there 4 times). If this had happened on our vacation that we left for 2 days later he would surely have lost his fingertip. I'm even glad they got busy and got behind because we got a hand surgeon. I realize he did not have to reattach nerves and all that, but you have mommy guilt, every little thing helps!!