Poor Milo

My poor little Milo had himself his first bad accident on Monday – he was playing on the steps to the porch when he missed his footing and went down, banging his face on the step on the way down and releasing an incredible amount of blood. I ran over and picked him up & froze – it was totally an ‘OMG, I have to figure out what to do – ALL BY MYSELF!!’ moment (Nate was out of town). It took about 30 seconds to get moving and then I hurled him in the carseat and hauled ass (safely & responsibly, of course) across town to the ER. There’s always that moment of doubt when you make the decision to go to the hospital – am I being a hypochondriac? Do I REALLY need to be here? But the look of alarm in the receptionist’s eyes when she saw the amount of blood completely validated the choice, as did the speed at which a doctor appeared to take us back to a room.

Turns out he had bitten all the way through his bottom lip and torn the piece of skin that connects his tongue to the lower part of his mouth. I got Nate on the phone and we decided to have them bring in the plastic surgeon on call (isn’t that a weird doctor to have on call? I’m so glad he was though) – perhaps a bit of overkill, but it’s his face and if we can do anything to reduce the scarring, I think it’s worth it. They put in an IV, put him under, and went to work – he was under for about a half hour total & got 8-9 stitches.

To all the doctors and nurses at St. John’s – thank you SO SO MUCH. Whenever we’ve had to go to the hospital everyone has been so wonderful – you are the huge silver lining in a horrible and scary experience!!!!

Milo is doing great – he had a great day yesterday and you’d never even know that he had hurt himself if it wasn’t for the big fat lip. And the stitches, of course.

Here are some iPhone shots I got while we were there – they let me stay in the room while they stitched him up. If hospital type things gross you out, you might not want to go any further. There is nothing too graphic or bloody (other than a shot of my shirt), but there are images of IVs and such.

Isn’t this the smallest blood pressure cuff you’ve ever seen?

The nurse snapped this one for me.

Knocked out, getting stitched up by the plastic surgeon.

Coming out of the ketamine haze.  You can hardly see the stitches, and really, the most obvious part is that scratch going up his cheek.  There’s a bit of  bruising and his lip is still a bit swollen, but he’s running around like nothing ever happened and seems to be feeling great.  Kids are amazing.