“I’m tough”

Our little princess has a history of treating every kind of “boo-boo” as if she’s just lost a limb. Always half-crying without stop until she gets a hug and a kiss (didn’t you know Mommy and Daddy’s kisses contain special healing powers?). So in an effort to “toughen” her a up a bit, we’ve been giving her her treatment, and telling her, “That’s a big girl, you’re tough.”, and she walks away feeling better. Lately, she has decreased the amount of carrying-on when she gets an owie, as long as we acknowledge that yes indeed, she has an owie, she seems satisfied. So now just asking, “Are you OK?”, she’s been replying, “Sure, I’m tough!”, and goes on her way.

The past couple of days, she’s been squatting down and moving about on all fours and barking, acting as if she’s a puppy. Not hands and knees, hands and feet. If you’ve seen the most recent Planet of the Apes movie, it’s something similar to what the apes look like when they’re running. She moved like this yesterday through the parking lot from the church to the car. So last night, we think she was having a puppy race, her against Stella, with the living room and the hall the arena. Racing down the hall as fast as she could on all fours, we think she somehow slipped (which happens often when she’s moving like this, and not all by accident mind you), slamming the back of her head against the sharp corner at the end of the hall.

She started crying (an indication that this owie was for real) and we both rushed to her to survey the damage. Becky (who, by the way just happened to be wearing a very nice white shirt), reached her first, scooped her up, and cradled her on the couch. She cried for a little bit, but had started to calm down when Becky looked at the hand that had been holding Ashlee’s head and noticed a bit of blood on it. She moved Ashlee’s head away from her body and sure enough, a nice pool of blood had collected on the front of her shirt. I started looking for the source, and after a bit of a search (that girl has a lot of hair), I found about a 1.5cm laceration near the back of her head. It looked deep enough and long enough for sutures. We called the nurse on call at her pediatrician’s office who also confirmed we should probably have her checked out. So I bandaged her up while Becky got a snack bag ready for us. Then Ashlee and I headed for the ER (we live only about seven minutes away).

By the time we got there, Ashlee was basically her usual self. Although shy with everyone asking her questions, you really couldn’t tell anything was wrong when it was just me and her. She did look a little confused being around the medical staff as I’m sure she was wondering why she was there since she had just seen the doctor for her yearly check up only a couple weeks ago. When the check-in nurse asked her to rate her pain on the 0-10, happy face to crying face scale, she pointed to the 10-crying face. We only waited in triage for a couple of minutes before being taken to Pediatric Urgent Care.

Once in our room, the nurse came in do the primary survey, followed by the resident who took Ashlee’s history and performed a very thorough neuro and secondary survey. Ashlee was really good, even opening her mouth so the resident could see inside without even being asked. When the doctor asked her to say, “Ah”, no sound came from Ash. Two more times she tried but again no sound. Finally I said, “Ashlee, say ah.” And the tiniest “Ah” you could imagine finally emerged. The decision was made that the laceration needed to be closed, so some “numbing” cream was applied.

Then Ash gulped down the two Gogurts Beck had packed for her, and we watched a show on HBO Family with a little baby conductor in diapers, orchestrating different animated images to classical music. We were waiting for the attending physician to come in and decide sutures or staples. When Ashlee’s show was over she turned the station to the football game and said, “There you go Daddy.” I love that girl!

Only a couple of minutes later the attending arrived. He decided two staples should do the job. So the resident irrigated the wound next. I explained to Ashlee what was going to happen but I’m not sure how much she understood. I don’t know about her but this was the part I was most worried about. I’ve had sutures in the back of my head, and it’s not a fond memory. Staples have got to be worse. So Ashlee looked down, and I held her head, her cheeks cupped in my hands. The resident put the first staple in and I don’t think Ashlee felt very much if anything. I told her we were almost done, only one more to go. I think she felt the second one a bit, I could see her whole body tense up as if to say, “You didn’t tell me you were going to do that!”, but nothing came out. She shook it off and didn’t cry at all. Our TOUGH little princess.

Ashlee happily ate up a popsicle while the doctor wrote up the discharge note and got me a staple remover since we’ll be in Utah when the staples need to come out. We drove home, Ashlee back to her usual self. She had me keep changing the radio stations until we found Let’s Get It Started. We didn’t find it by the way. Not five minutes after getting home, what did we catch her doing? Picking up the puppy race where she had left off.

I’ve put up a post with a couple of pictures and little movie taken after we got home from the ER. Squeamish people need not follow. You’ll hear Ashlee give her, “I’m tough”, line after slipping near the end of the video clip. I don’t know how she’ll remember it, but the toughest time for me was watching my poor little baby get that second staple. Looking back at the whole thing after the children were in bed, Becky and I were actually surprised that this was only the first visit to the ER for Ash. We remember thinking that between ages 2 and 3, she was destined for the ER.