Ouch

Yesterday about when the kids should have been coming home from school I happened to glance out the front door and saw Abigail standing at the door with blood dripping down her face while she was crying and trying to unlock the door. I ran over and opened the door and pulled her inside the house to try and find out what had happened. She told me that she'd been having a race with Justin from the bus (I still have no idea who Justin is) when she tripped and fell. Emily was home sick and Madison had after school stuff, so the poor thing was all alone. She had one small scrape on her knee, but every other injury was on her sweet, beautiful face. We got to the kitchen and I started cleaning her up, but the blood just kept coming, darn head wounds! I did eventually get the bleeding to slow down enough to see that she has a pretty deep cut above her eyebrow that would probably need stitches. I grabbed an ice pack for the Blabbs and had her sit on the couch and then enlisted Emily and Samantha to help me get ready to leave. Emily packed snacks to bring along and Samantha was to find activities for everyone to do during the wait. While we were all running around Abigial kept asking me if we needed to call 112 (the German emergency number) for an ambulance. I just kept telling her that she'd be fine and not to worry.

We got to the emergency room and I was just hoping that it wouldn't be busy. I mean, it was four o'clock on a Wednesday, shouldn't everyone be at their actual doctor's offices? Nope, they were all at the ER with us. We let the nurse know why we were there and sat down to wait when I saw a friend from church walking down the hall toward us. A bit of a tangent here, but I love that being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really does provide me with an instant support network wherever we move to. I don't think I could survive our crazy life without it. Anyway, she saw that we were there and would likely be there for a long time and offered to take Natalie and Samantha home with her. Hallelujah! We'd only been there ten minutes and Natalie had already spilled her goldfish crackers on the floor and Samantha, the sweetheart, was whining up a storm about not having a pink crayon. I'm usually hesitant to ask for or accept help, but I was not about to turn her offer down. Almost immediately after that another friend from church happened by and offfered to pick Madison up after her band concert and drive her and Emily home. Yep, I missed Madison's very first band concert. She plays percussion and, according to our friend, she was one of the only musicians in tune :) Good friends are so wonderful to have!

That left just me and Abigail at the hospital; we eventually got called back to Triage where she was given a new ice pack and we were sent to another waiting area where we waited, and waited, and waited. Everyone around us was taken to be seen, even the people who came in after us. Poor Abby was doing her best to be brave, but she could not stop shaking. Her whole body was shaking and her teeth were chattering for the first three hours that we were there. It wasn't cold, she was just really, really scared. I put both of our coats over her like a blanket to try and help her feel better. Eventually she closed her eyes and calmed down a little, but wouldn't you know it, that's when we were FINALLY called back to be seen and she started shaking all over again because she was so scared about the prospect of having to get stitches.

We were shown to a room, a nurse came in and checked her over, and then left and told us the doctor would be in to see us in a few minutes. Thirty minutes later, the doc showed up and looked Abby over. Because the area around her eye was so swollen and bruised there was some concern that she might have fractured her orbital bone so to check that and to make sure there wasn't any bleeding going on inside her head, they decided she should have a CT scan. The doctor left and told us that someone would be back in a minute to take us down to CT. Fifteen minutes later Abigail said to me, "Today I've learned that when doctors tell you they'll be back in a minute you shouldn't really believe them because they won't." We did make it to CT a little later and were pleased to see that the radiology guy (like my technical term there?) was another friend from church. He got Abby a warm blanket to use while she was having the scan done and gave her Jolly Ranchers to suck on - those Jolly Ranchers were so perfect too, the snacks Emily packed were all to crunchy for Abby to eat with her busted up lip so Abbs had a Jolly Rancher dinner. Thankfully, the CT showed nothing out of the ordinary and we were one step closer to getting out of there.

We made our way back to the ER and our little room and waited some more. A very nice nurse came to clean up her face before they stitched her up and it was nice to see that her face didn't look so bad once the dried blood was cleaned off. She was super scared when the doctor came in with all the tools to take care of the big cut over her eyebrow. Instead of using numbing cream first and then getting some shots to numb the area, she decided to just get the shots so it could all be over faster. She cried a little for the first shot, but after that was so very good about it all. Three stitches and a trip to the pharmacy later, we were out of there and on our way home.

If there can be an upside to the whole thing, I think it was the time I was able to spend with Abigail. Being the middle child, she tends to get overlooked. Thankfully, she's got the kind of personality that can handle not always being the center of attention. For the five hours we were at the hospital though, she was center stage for me. We talked a lot and I learned things about Abby that I didn't know before. For instance, she loves animals. She told me all about whales and why their body temperatures are so similar to humans. When we were trying to get her to swallow a pill for the first time she wished she could be like a penguin and swallow things whole without a problem. I asked her to tell me some other things about animals and I was really surprised by how much she knows. Abigail also is interested in art. We saw a Van Gogh print when we were walking down the hallway to pick up her painkillers from the pharmacy and she said to me, "I really like Van Gogh paintings. Starry Night is probably my favorite but I like Sunflowers too. I can even draw Starry Night really well." She just kept chattering away about Van Gogh for five minutes. I had no idea at all that art was important to her. I've always thought she was a pretty good little artist and have even framed one of her drawings and set aside many others to have framed someday, but I always thought Emily was our most art-loving child. Yesterday made me really see how important it is for me to make time for one on one conversations with all our girls. Here's hoping that next time it won't take a trip to the ER to make it happen!