Adventures in Parenting: Three Unfortunate Firsts

Yesterday I was busy at work, sucks to work the Sunday before Labor day, but so it goes. Right now I'm on high alert for the call that says 'It's time to go to the hospital.' So when I saw my phone number pop up on caller ID, I was ready to move. I never imagined we'd have to go to the hospital for another reason.

I pick up the phone, knowing it's Brandi. In the background Logan is wailing at the top of his lungs and I can barely hear Brandi. After putting my finger to my ear, I'm able to hear that Logan has gotten a dog bite. Does he need to go to the hospital? Yes, he does, and I need to get home. I rush to the back and call my assistant manager to come in and finish my shift. She sounds really disappointed that I've called her in, but I really don't have any other options.

I get in the car and call Brandi back. Apparently, her dad and grandparents had just gotten back from the Farm, and Logan was playing hopscotch on the driveway. Her grandparent's dog was near him, they're bussom buddies after all, and Logan fell on her. She reacted as any hurt/startled dog would and snapped at him. She bit him in the mouth and scratched him on the face under his eye. It's not clear if she scratched him with her teeth or claws. Brandi cleaned up the blood and tried to calm him down as best she could while I flew home. I found out later that Brandi's grandfather was telling Logan to stop crying, as if that would work.

Logan starts crying again when he sees me pull into the driveway, and 30 seconds after I get home, we're on the move to the ER. The bleeding's stopped, but he has a decent cut on the outside of his lip, and we're not sure about the inside of his mouth.

At the ER they get us into the room within a few minutes and after a little while, the doctor comes in to give an initial look. He says it should be two stitches on the outside and none on the inside. Then a couple of nurses come in to put some antibiotic/numbing ointment on and then they tell us that after about a half hour they'll come back to do stitches. Over an hour later a nurse comes in with a doctor.

Logan's fallen asleep by this point, but wakes up when we set him down on the table. He's angry and hurt and tired and scared and all he wants to do is go home. Instead, they pull out this padded board with ginormous Velcro straps to hold him down. Brandi and I have to hold down his arms and he's screaming "Help Daddy" "Help Mommy." We watch in stunned silence as the doctor puts multiple injections of a local anesthetic in both sides of his lip and then starts to do the stitches. The nurse his holding his head down and Logan, a big two-year-old is straining with all his might. I try to whisper in his ear that he's being a good boy and that we'll be able to leave soon to little effect. All his straining and moving makes it all the more difficult for the doctor to do his work and the stitches take a few minutes more than they'd need to. When all's said and done, he got six stitches, three outside his lip and three inside. With all the swelling and the scratches on his face, he looks more like he got into a bar brawl than he got bit by a dog.

After the stitches and the prescription for antibiotics, the nurses try to give him some Sesame Street stickers and a dragon Beanie Baby. He wants neither. He just wants to go home and he's crying and pointing at any door that looks like it might lead outside. The whole ER process only took 3 frickin hours.

All the fussing and struggling and crying wore him out and once he's in bed, he sleeps without a peep until 6 this morning and then I get him to go back to bed for another hour and a half.

Brandi's grandparents came over this morning, sans Cujo, and Logan's in high spirits and excited to see them. We'll give it a couple days before he sees Daisy again. It sucks that he had to go through all that and I'm worried that now he'll be scared of dogs, which he never was before. The internal stitches will dissolve, and we'll have to go to his doctor on Friday to get the others removed. Good thing I already had that day off of work. What a weekend.