Church is hard. It’s long and boring and you have to stay on a pew with your family and try to be quiet. Patrick likes to stand on the bench and play with all the people who sit behind us.
The first week of July, he lost his balance doing this. Came down on the corner of the bench in front.
He landed and held his breath and I knew a scream was coming, so I grabbed him quick and hurried out of the meeting as quickly as I could. A woman visiting our meeting stood and tried to follow me with this horrified look on her face.
I didn’t understand why until I got to the foyer.
Thank goodness other friends followed and went back to get Brian, who had no idea what had happened.
We applied pressure and bleeding stopped, but it was pretty clear he’d need stitches.
We debated where to go, but decided that if he had a concussion and needed to be admitted, he’d be most comfortable at the children’s hospital.
He was very happy that they used pink coflex to hold a gauze of lidocaine on the wound.
When his head was good and numb, a very green seeming resident, with supervision from a familiar ER doctor, irrigated the wound. Then they put in five staples. They just stapled hair right in.
Staples are preferred over stitches for children’s head wounds because they are easier to put in and take out. (Stitches would require sedation.) He has a cool scar that will show up if he ever shaves his head.
Patrick didn’t like the staples. He called them “pretties,” confusing them with the bobby pins his aunt sometimes puts in his hair. They were uncomfortable to lay on so we had to change all his diapers standing up for a week. He couldn’t immerse his head in water, but was supposed to wash it often. Every day I cleaned it with peroxide and put an antibiotic on it. He didn’t like that. They made it hard to sleep, too. He asked me several times a day to take the “pretties off.”
But they only had to stay in for 6 days. We took him back to the hospital and it took about 2 minutes for a nurse to remove them with a one-pronged staple remover.
I’m amazed this is the first ER visit he’s ever had for an injury. I have a feeling that, for this active boy, it will not be his last.
Hopefully, it’s the last injury in sacrament meeting, though.
Patrick Hoopes 