T's first ER Visit

I posted this on the family web site on December 19, 2011. The Actual ER trip was December 16th...

Luckily we knew it wasn't critical, but we decided it really couldn't wait until morning. I got a call from daycare around 4:45pm saying T had tripped into a shelf and cut his lip badly and that we should come as soon as was convenient. I had been planning to leave anyway, so I packed up, picked Scott up at the other campus, and headed to daycare to get T.

He was playing (only slightly mournfully), sucking a pacifier, and was wearing a fresh (non-bloody) outfit. There was a large flap of skin on the lower part of his upper lip that was being held in place by the pacifier. I think his lower teeth went into his upper lip at a weird angle and tore down so the flap was attached at the bottom of his upper lip. We took him him home and went about our normal routine. He ate a little, but cried when tomato sauce on his pasta burned the wound. He took a bath, nursed and went to bed without too much trouble. At 8:30pm he woke up crying and kept rubbing his lip so the injury wouldn't stay closed :(

I called the after hours doc and asked for advice. She double-checked with the ER and let us know that they would do stitches if it was bad enough so we decided to head down. The wound was pretty nasty looking, but it wasn't deep, just long. I figured they would probably just cut the flap off and I was right. The doc said it was a good idea to come in because the lip would heal quicker and cleaner without the flap and T would be much more comfortable. He kept trying to spit the skin flap out out by blowing raspberries which only made the skin flap around. T was awake (and happy, thanks to pacifier and ibuprofen) the whole time we were at the ER. He conked out around midnight, about halfway through the car ride home and slept well until the ibuprofen wore off a few hours later. We ended up giving him ibuprofen every 6-8 hours for almost 2 days.

I was amazed by how much better his lip looked the next morning. They say he's really good about letting them ice his owies at daycare, so the swelling was really minimal and all the blood and angry red were gone after the trimming. It was a long night, but I'm glad we went.