Here's the Story

No sooner had I gotten into work yesterday than I got a call from Donny's daycare: he had hit his head against a shelf and had cut himself above his eye. They thought he might need stitches and could I come and get him. I called Mike and we decided that he would pick up the boy, come and get me and then drop Donny and I off at the Emergency Room of Children's Hospital. While I waited I made the necessary calls to cancel YET AGAIN another attempt to move several boxes of football film over to offsite storage. You know those projects that just seem to have a lightning rod stuck in them? These films are one of those.

So Mike picks me up and, there's my baby, gash above his eye with little tiny blood bubbles on it, and the kid is clapping and laughing. Well, at least he doesn't know to be scared. Mike dropped us off at the emergency room and where we got paperwork, an ID bracelet for Donny, and a seat in some strange waiting room left over from 1982.

Children's Hospital is in the process of moving to Lawrenceville. That means the fancy new building is being built while the old building in Oakland inches into genteel shabbiness. If a building I owned was going to be imploded in the next 3 years or so, I wouldn't invest in paint either, but I did feel like we were seeing the end of a hospital era, what with the big wood and glass cabinets and the early 80's electronics in their dark beige plastic and big rubbery number buttons.

The first doctor came to look at Donny and, since it was a head injury, she had to do all sorts of tests: do his eyes still move correctly? Were any of his teeth knocked loose? Did he bite his tongue? How do his ears look inside? None of this went over well with the boy in question and there was much shrieking and crying. The upside is that, when she left, Donny fell almost immediately asleep on my shoulder. It was very sweet but my shoulder was killing me so I wrapped him up in my coat and he slept like that for about 2 hours with a brief wake up when another doctor put topical anesthesia and a bandaid on the cut. The decision was made to just do topical anesthesia as opposed to full anesthesia, which would require lots of extra time and the risk of an adverse reaction. With the topical anesthesia, however, they would have to "papoose" him. Oddly, while Donny was napping, I took a photo of the "Papoose Board" that was hanging on the wall. The artwork looks like it should be on the nose of a WWII Fighter Plane. When I took the photo, I had no idea that Donny would be a papoose candidate but, there he was, woken up and trussed in with a variety of velcro panels. He was a very good boy, considering everything. He got 4 of the tiniest stitches ever, which the doctor protected with gauze and "glue." He should be healed and the stitches should fall out on their own in about 6 days. I watched him all day to make sure he would'nt worry the gauze off but he doesnt seem to know there's this stuff stuck to his eyelid. He did wake up last night a couple of times, tho, and he did end up sleeping with us. Here's hoping he has a good day at daycare today. If he's smart, he'll show off his stitches to all the girlies. Chicks dig scars.