A note from Mom:
Colton did battle with either Seddi or Kali last night. It all happened so fast I'm not exactly sure which one made contact. In any case, Colton is now sporting a sweet set of stitches and a really cute dragon toy that he refuses to let out of his sight.
We were reading bedtime stories when Seddi got a wild hair and bounded up the stairs into Colton's room. Kali was lying on the bed and before I knew it Seddi had jumped up on the bed and Kali made her way off the bed to the window. Colton screamed and Seddi ran out of the room. I turned to see if Colton was okay and there was a scratch under his eye and a slow trickle of blood running down his face. Closer inspection in the bathroom with some hydrogen peroxide revealed that the cut was deep enough to require a trip to the ER for a professional opinion. When I told Colton that we were going to have to go to the doctor he screamed:
"NOOOOO! I don't want a shot!!
I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was in for much worse than a shot.
So, at 9pm - Colton in his green bear footie pjs - the three of us head out to the closest emergency room. We arrive and get escorted immediately to an exam room where they take a quick look and ask all the usual questions and a nurse shows up with a cute little stuffed dragon that he says Colton can keep if he would like. This of course made that "doctor" - really cool. Next they send in the doctor to discuss our "options" for repair. At this point the doctor was doing the hard sell on sedating him so that they could properly clean and stitch the cut. Glueing, he said, was also an option though some kids tend to pick at the glue. The sedative he proposed was a cocktail of drugs that included something I think they use as a tranquilizer for horses, some other drug to prevent him from over salivating (that had a side effect of potentially making his heart race), mixed with another drug they give to adults with anxiety...and one or two other things I can't quite remember. I think the doctor could see that I was not jumping for joy over the thought of my 35 lb. son being unconscious...but I have to admit that it occurred to me that there was little likelihood of getting out of there without one of us being deeply traumatized. Imagine the alternative: physical restraint and hoping that he doesn't jerk at just the wrong moment and end up with a stitch in the eye.
So, the ER nurses (gotta love them) convinced the doc that since Colton had been such a calm patient up until this point that perhaps they should try to clean the cut and if he works through that fine then proceed to the stitching without a sedative cocktail. If it looks like he's not going to have any of it then we can always give him the sedative at that point.
My sweet son...fell asleep with the topical litocaine taped to his face. When the doc came in to do the local anesthesia and the assistant realized he was asleep, he burritod him up in a sheet and he never woke up when he was being injected with the local anesthesia and remained asleep through the entire stiching process. He did twinge once in a while and we assumed he was so sound asleep he must've thought he was having some kind of bad dream. The doc and assistant remarked that this was the first time they had ever stitched a patient that was sleeping without sedation. It was really amazing. Even more amazing...we were in and out of that emergency room in under 2 hrs.
He never woke when we picked him up and carried him to the car and he never woke when we carried him from the car to his bed. Slept straight through until morning.
I woke him this morning before leaving for work so that I could explain how the doctor had fixed the scratch and show him what it looked like.
My nurse friend and cousin (both with the same name interestingly enough) will probably most appreciate this photo. I chose blue stitches...figured they were more exciting then black.
