Ouch

The good news is that Lexi is going to be fine.  The bad news is that Thursday was a really hard day.

I wish that yesterday had a reset button.  I would have gone to the gym with the girls instead of taking them for a walk and getting caught in a downpour a mile from home.  I would have kept track of my keys and spent the hours between 10 and 12 shopping for little girl fall clothes instead of tearing the house apart looking for said keys.  And mostly, when I was out to lunch with friends, I would have walked Lexi ten feet to the bathroom instead of letting her go by herself.

Here's what happened when I did that:

Lexi caught her finger in the hinge side of the heavy bathroom door.  Her piercing scream made me sick to my stomach.  When I got to her and saw her injury, I knew it was more than the usual smashed-in-a-door finger.  The fingernail had popped out at the bottom.  Blood was dripping.  Lexi was hysterical.  I struggled to control my emotions, too.

Luckily I was out to lunch with angels.  Jennie has a medical background, so she calmly told me what needed to be done.  Audra scooped up Kate (who adores her) and took her home.  April covered Audra's carpool duty so Kate could nap.  Melissa grabbed all of my things and gave me a desperately-needed hug as I left.

Lexi and I went home.  We iced her finger a little bit, put on a Band-Aid, and snuggled in my bed.  We watched Beauty and the Beast until Lexi cried herself to sleep.  After she'd been asleep about half an hour, I called my pediatrician's office to make sure my watch-and-wait approach didn't equal negligence. I was surprised when the nurse urged me to come in right away.  After asking a neighbor to pick Gavin up from school, I scooped up my sleeping girl and off we went. Amazingly, she didn't wake up until we were in the building.

The second she woke up, however, Lexi started crying again. She was shaking her hand really fast, too.  Poor baby.  It killed me to see her in pain!  The PA we saw decided not to push the nail back into the bed (that might have done me in) because the draining blood was good for the finger.  Because of Lexi's continuous crying and the places that hurt, the PA prescribed Vicodin and an x-ray.  Lexi was so relieved to get a Band-Aid back on the wound.  The air made it sting even more.

After we left, we dropped off the prescription, picked up Kate from Audra's, picked up Tyler from his news crew meeting at school, picked up Zach from cross country practice, and picked up Gavin from the neighbor.  Garry met us at home at about 4:45.  He had picked up the Vicodin on his way home.  We debriefed in the kitchen and then I took Tyler to art on our way to the imaging center.  (Are you tired yet?)

Once I walked into the lab and handed over the x-ray order, I thought, "You don't need to be here."  We sat down anyway (settling in for a two-hour wait), but Lexi, hopped up on Vicodin, was almost giddy.  She was bending her finger ("Look what I can do, Mom! It bends all the way!") like nothing had happened.  It still hurt when I pinched in certain places, but I was quite encouraged.  So we put on her little splint, wrapped it with gauze and tape, and went home.

Lexi woke up crying in the night because her splint fell off and the pain meds weren't in her system.  But this morning she is doing well and I think the worst is over.  What a relief!