Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Our first major trauma

We have had a long few days here. We found out last week that my aunt passed away. She was suffering from advanced stages of Huntington's disease. I am glad that she is no longer suffering but sad that she has now left my 2 cousins, that are both close to my age, with no parents. Their father, my uncle passed away 17 years ago from an accident. It is just not fair sometimes. The funeral was on Monday so all the "grown ups" traveled down to Colorado Springs to attend the services. It was nice seeing family that I haven't seen for awhile but the circumstances were crappy. In part of a tribute my cousin had wrote for her mom she said something along the lines of "I must now learn a lesson that I try and teach my kids everyday, which is to share. I can only imagine how happy she must have been to return to my father's arms and see him once again." I love you guys!
My aunt Holly and cousin Katie have been here since Sunday and I haven't seen them for awhile and have been able to visit and catch up with them which has been fun.
Today Amy, my dad, and I took all the kids to the $1 movie, Arthur and the invisibles. It was pretty cute and most of them really enjoyed it. I brought my nephew Cole home with us to play for the afternoon with Olivia. They enjoy each other's company but are just into playing different things so they hung out together but seemed to be playing their own things, which was funny to see.
I had the missionaries over for dinner this evening. Members of our church take turns feeding the missionaries dinner every night and it was my turn. After the kids finished they were being crazy so I suggested they go out to the back yard and run around. Before I knew it Olivia was up on the porch saying Cody scratched himself. When I came around to the door I could hear him screaming and thought that sounds a little worse than a scratch. I saw him bend his knee to step up onto the porch and there was a gaping hole in his knee. I could see the white fatty tissue. yuck. Of course I ran down and scooped him up and put my hand over the gash and yelled to Jon we had to go to the ER immediately and to run get the neighbor until my mom could get over with the kids. I wasn't about to strap Cody in a car seat and hope he didn't bleed to death or bend his knee so knew I was going to have to have someone drive me there. He went to get the neighbor and her father, who was an EMT, was in town today so he came over to check him out to tell us if we could just go to the urgent care of if he though he tore a muscle and we would have to go to the ER. He was able to bend his leg and move his foot and toes so thought it would just need stitches. When I called my mom, all I got out was I have to take Cody to the ER NOW, I need someone to come over. I was quite impressed. My dad got there as we were leaving the neighborhood so seriously about 7 min. Good time, dad! I remembered in the car I had my camera in my purse so I decided to take a picture, but it turned out kinda fuzzy.

You can't really see how deep it really is, because I didn't want him to keep bending it but seriously you could see the muscle that was UNDER the fatty part of the skin, it was huge. When we got to the urgent care they put this numbing stuff on a big piece of gauze and set it inside the wound and taped it down. The nurse said that it would really help when they started to give him the shots to numb it up. It took about a 1/2 hour of sitting there for it to set in so we had some time to hang out. Here is our trooper in the mean time.

He wasn't sure that he wanted to eat the sucker, but he did want to just hold onto it. He was seriously SO brave. When the doc came in there was only once or twice where he could feel the needle with the numbing medication when he had to do the really deep part and he kept saying Ouch mom ouch, but never cried and never screamed. Jon was there to hold his leg still but he didn't even move that. What a good patient. The nurses even walked by and said, I thought we were having stitches in this room? They were so impressed he wasn't screaming or crying. The doctor was great too. Jon and I were like kids all interested in what he was doing and how he was stitching him up. He explain the step by step processes of what he was doing and why. It was very interesting. He spent awhile cleaning out out. There was dirt all over and even some grass. They had to do 5 stitches that are under the skin to keep the tissue together under the skin that will dissolve. They also did one stitch on the skin called a running stitch that is just one piece of thread that goes in and out of the skin and knots on each side of the cut. The doc thought that it would heal better and leave less of a scar. Our instructions are to try and not have him bend his knee back too far and try to keep him resting tomorrow and the next day and let it heal. They are a little worried about it tearing since it is on a joint. Well that is going to be a fun task to try and keep my 3 year old sitting on the couch. Oh and no swimming either. Fun. The dead heat of summer and Cody gets to sit out of all the pool dates. We were planning on going to the outdoor city park pool in Fort Collins tomorrow, so I guess he gets to sit at home instead. Poor guy. Here is a video of him in the car afterwards. What a trooper!



4 comments:

Mel Sims said...

Oh wow you guys! Poor little guy!! give him lots of kisses from me.

So sorry to hear about your aunt. =[ That just sucks. Her kids sound so strong...I guess you'd have to be. =[

Love ya!

Toni said...

Too bad I had to hear about my nephew's stitches through a blog... I see where I lay on the priority scale.

Michelle said...

Sorry to hear about your aunt. That's so tough, but it sounds like her kids will do okay. I can't imagine not having my dad here when I lost my mom though. Wow.

Cody's the man!!! Sounds like he is a trooper. Good luck keeping him down. I know how hard that is.

The Bluths said...

You'll have to update to tell us whether or not those stitches tore. I can't imagine my 3 year old keeping still!