Dave's no good, bad day

Yesterday.

Yesterday I got to experience that heart stopping adrenalin that we mom's dread. You know, the one that comes a split second after your child wails and you know something is dreadfully wrong.

Heaven knows my children wail a lot. Sometimes between Kate and Ean, my desire to plug my mp3 player into my ears and drown them out is enormous. But the wail I heard yesterday wasn't either one of them. It wasn't Jane nor was it Greg. It was my little Dave.

I know, I know, David and Greg are the same size but there's something about David, the tone of his voice, the way he moves, that just makes calling him "little Dave" seem natural. Blame my mom, she started it. *laugh*

I did say, six kids, didn't I? I had my niece Sarah on loan. We had invited her to the movies to see "Madagascar 2" with popcorn. Sarah's mom had dropped her off, my mom had arrived to come with us. After unlocking the suburban door, I started around to the other side, the twins seats are behind the driver, and middle, so that's where I buckle them. I made it to the very back of the car, so only two or three seconds from when I unlocked the door when the wail happened.

My mom yelled for me, and turned around and ran around the car. My mom was holding Davids wrist tightly, applying pressure. There was blood gushing. I grabbed the child and ran into the house and started the faucet. I couldn't even see where to apply pressure. I figured out quickly it was his thumb, took his hand out of the water, and mom handed me paper towels, we quickly soaked what we had and got new ones.

While trying to hold on the paper towels with a frantically crying boy at my feet, mom and I exchanged keys and I gave her the movie tickets. The movie was paid for, there was no reason for the other kids to not go and mom was a complete sport taking five children to the movies.

I got Ean's booster, safety out the window, I wasn't going to take the time to move a proper car seat. Conveniently there's an urgent care just outside our neighborhood, so I didn't have to go far. They got us right in and the nurse smeared Dave's thumb with numbing stuff.

He just sobbed, for a very long time.

Since it was a crushing injury (car door) the doctor ordered x-rays.

Three were taken and poor David just hated having to put his thumb down but he did really well. Very soon he figured out what was expected and when one of the shots needed to be redone, he held his hand very still with no prompting for the final x-ray.

It was confirmed that his bone was chipped. Once they started cleanup we realized he'd also lost his nail, both of these on top of a pretty ugly laceration. The Novocaine was the worst part, I had to hold him down for that but he was very cooperative once his thumb was numb. The laceration required three stitches. It runs almost the whole length of his thumb. The stitches look funny because the cut is jagged. It's actually not very big, but his thumb is so little, it looks much bigger then it is.

I requested Tylenol with codeine for the guy. He was being so brave but at the same time, the chipped bone, the lost nail along with the stitches, just makes you cringe. It makes me cringe!

Apparently codeine doesn't make David sleepy. He's got to be the only person in the world, but he was wired last night. Kent called me from work to let me know that he'd heard crying and noise from the bedroom. Worried about David's thumb, he opened the door. David was standing on Greg's chest jumping up and down.

We know the Codeine relieved pain, cause he was a stinker to his twin! Poor Greg!! His brother gets hurt and he suffers!

Tomorrow I take him in to change the dressing, we'll see if they say anything about the cherry stains on it. Actually I had to put it back on multiple times today, but it was still dry, so I didn't take him in. Hopefully it's all healing the way it should be.

All together now... POOR DAVID!!!!