Stitches

Or How Our Easter Sunday went from this:

and this (so fun!)

 and this (see? excited!)

To this (what's this? Numbing salve??!! Giant anethesia needles?!? ER??):

and this (yup-sucked exactly as much as it looks like it would (and the bad part is inside and down):

So, Addie made it to the ER on Easter Sunday. It took far longer for her to get there than I imagined it would, since she's my daredevil. She's the one with all the nerve, but little sense of potential consequence. I suspect she will be the one who just might give me a honest-to-God heart attack when she base jumps from the Sears Tower, or something like that.

We started the day with a super fun Easter Egg hunt dressed in the fabulous dresses Nonni and G-D bought them and super awesome fancy hairdos (per request). Then we went to church and had a very nice mass about The Day. Then we came home and I got busy busy with lunch preparations. And Addie took a nap, and Gillian refused to eat the meal I worked on for several hours. After Addie woke up, we went over to our favorite park, Lazarus (2 blocks away-a trip solely intended to let them run off some energy).

Imagine-Sean and I were together at the playground with them (Two Adults! Two!!)-perfectly balanced to ensure all would be well...I thought. Well, Addie lately has been crawling on her hands and knees to get across this "bridge" (read-5x5 beams suspended by chain about 2.5 feet high) and was showing me how she could do it herself (well, because she likes to do everything by herself and because formerly, she always had to have someone hold her hand across), and when she reached the end she got distracted by someone yelling and looked over toward the sound. Her right hand missed the plank, and her face smacked down onto the rubber plated metal platform on the end of the bridge. The she fell a couple feet to the ground. Like slow motion, I ran over and scooped her up, afraid to see what teeth she had just knocked out. Or what she had done to her face or head. I held her TIGHT because I was pretty sure she had just disfigured herself for eternity. I pulled her back to take a look-blood kindof streaming out of a small slit on the bottom right side of her mouth. A friend at the playground who is a doc (how lucky is that?!?) took a look at the little gash-looking lesion and said she might have bitten through and said we might need stitches and that we should go to the ER. So we did. Addie cried for about 1 minute and then was kind of amazed by the blood and asked if she could have a bandaid now? (because I always tell her she's not bleeding so she doesn't need one).

So, Sean and I hustled back to the house to get my wallet and the car (G stayed there with friends) and I took Addie to the ER. We waited for HOURS. Thank God for iPhones and Netflix. When we got in the room, several people came to visit-a resident doc who was young and boyishly handsome, an older Indian nurse, and eventually the attending doc. The older Indian woman asked Addie "Did Mama hit you?" and Addie looked completely annoyed, gave her the chin down, brow-furrowed stink eye and snipped "NO." She would totally have rolled her eyes if she knew how. Well, the resident and attending found that the bleeding that I was having Addie hold a tissue to the whole way there and for two hours in the waiting room wasn't the problem. It was the inch long VERY deep gash on her inside bottom lip that was doing that-the one we all missed (the one most likely slit open by her freakish vampire-like canines). Oops.

Anyway, it took 2 hours in the waiting room, 2 hours in the "Rapid Care" area (oh, the irony), and because I requested a plastic surgeon (it's her FACE; don't judged me. I have seen many a botched lip repair in this lifetime) it took an extra couple of hours because they had to summon him from his  suburban home. In the meantime, the nurses crowded over Addie to put this numbing stuff on her lip, and proceeded a few minutes later to give her shots-6 of them-in her lip, gums, and cheek, while she layed there politely with her mouth open like she was asked-no whining, no crying, no tears (insert the staff collective awe at her bravery)...and they told me we could wrap her in a "coccoon" which would serve to keep her arms and legs from clawing at the hand with the needle and messing up the stitching (and put her into a full-fledged panic complete with banshee quality screaming, I am sure). I asked if I could just lay next to her and hold her and if we could NOT restrain her. So, that's what I did when Yuppy-Johnny-Cheekbones-Plastic-Surgeon (Read: middle of the night attire than included: cashmere sweater vest, monogrammed buttom up, khakis and those leather shoes that have the little tasles hanging off them) stitched her gash shut.

Midnight attire for Dr. Cheekbones included slip on tassle shoes not unlike these:

Addie did not whimper, she did not cry, she did not try to fight the doc or nurses. She laid there way longer than she is willing to keep her mouth open for a tooth brushing. The internal stitches were put in with a hook needle approximately the size of a mosquito eyelash and there was a good bit of digging around trying to find where the string went or the knot (somehow this did not phase me even though I got light-headed digging around in my leg to take my own stitches out when I had a lesion removed)). I watched from 4 inches from her face and gave her a calm steady stare and reassuring words. The upper stitches were put in with a fish hook sized hook needle and about 85% of the way through that Addie FREAKED-started crying while also obediently keep her mouth wide open. Whether the numbing stuff was wearing off or the tugging on her mouth was freaking her out, I don't know. But the surgeon said he has three daughters and none of them would have tolerated it nearly as long (or at all). So we got discharged at 12:30 am-6 hours and 22 minutes after arrival. We survived. Addie might always have a little scar in the spot on te corner of her mouth, but it could have been worse-the teeth all were fine. But, that there is another thing to add to my motherhood tackle box of training experiences for the future.