And the end table won

Well, just as Dan has been predicting ever since we've had children--someone would end up in the ER due to a run-in with the end tables Grandpa Hoogeveen made for us for our wedding. That poor child was Darin.

I had asked Dan to grab my wallet as I was leaving for work tonight so that I could stop and get gas in the morning since Dan has to drive to LaCrosse Tuesday for work. So Dan asked Ellie to get it for me and Darin thought that he should get it. So he took off at lightening speed. At some point he must have tripped and fallen, hitting his head on the corner of the end table. Nobody saw it happen. Dan came back in the house and saw Darin standing there screaming. He immediately thought to himself, "This is one tired boy." Then he saw the blood. Miraculously, he (Dan) didn't pass out (or if he did, he didn't admit to it). So when I got to work, there was a message to call home. Dan explained the situation and I told him to bring him up here for me to look at so we could determine if he needed stitches or not. Poor Natalie was already tucked in for the night and sleeping. But Dan got all the kids and brought them along. I looked at it and sent them to the ER.

Dan and the kids had to wait in the waiting room for over an hour until they could be seen. Once they were in a room, I had someone cover for me so I could go down. It wouldn't have been pretty for Dan to try to hold Darin and take care of a very tired Natalie at the same time. Plus Dan doesn't do well with needles, blood, etc. Darin screamed when they put the Lidocaine in but was calm after that. They didn't need to use any sort of sedation and they were all quite impressed with how well he behaved. He was the talk of the ER for sure.

After they numbed his ear (that's the point of impact with the table), they had to irrigate it. He thought it tickled and giggled uncontrollably. We were all laughing. I just love it when he laughs like that. They had a child life specialist come in and talk to him about what tools the doctor would be using. He got to hold them and play with them for a bit so he thought that was pretty cool. Then they had him lie down on the bed and the ENT doc got to work stitching him up. It took almost the entire movie of Toy Story for him to get it done. He needed 3 deep stitches and somewhere around 22 superficial stitches to sew him back together. He had 3 different spots that needed stitches.

So when I go home in the morning, I'll have to attempt to clean the blood out of the carpet, get his antibiotic filled (precautionary since he tore his cartilage) and go buy him a toy at Target. I'll try to post some pics too.