It was a perfect day. Jones flew out early that morning to Florida for a job interview. While he was in Phoenix for a layover he got to have a conversation with Ted Raimi (who I most remember as Joxer from Xena). Hooray for famous people!
Anyway, so we were at home and the kids had just gone outside to play. I was lagging a little bit behind because I was finishing up a game with Keli and my mom. Suddenly, I heard a very loud BOOM! (which I learned later was actually the sound of Gareth's head hitting the metal table) and then a WAAAAAAAAAAH! from Gareth. This was not his typical cry or scream so I knew something wasn't right. I went running out there and saw Gareth dripping blood. At first I thought it was just another one of his bloody noses (he get's those a LOT) but then I realized it wasn't coming from his nose. I took a closer look and saw that his lip was split open and hanging at an odd angle. I scooped him up and took him back into the house where I was able to get a closer look (all this while poor Gareth is screaming). I looked inside his mouth and realized the ugliness of the lip was not the worst of it. Gareth's front teeth were bleeding and knocked back. Also, his gums were really scraped up. Then I noticed that his tears had blood in them...which led to me noticing a cut above his eye.
Thankfully, my mom was there and I was able to put Gareth in the car and leave Ruth and Ronan at home. We went to the urgent care (because our insurance has told us that if we go to the emergency room when it's not a life-threatening emergency we run the chance of them not paying for it). After waiting for a while at the urgent care, we were able to see the doctor. He looked Gareth over and took some pictures. When he saw his teeth and gums he decided that it would be a bad idea for him to attempt to sew him up there at the Urgent Care. The cuts above his teeth had exposed the roots of the teeth and it would be a very difficult procedure without sedation. So off to the emergency room we went!
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| They put on a wet bandage at the Urgent Care so the wound wouldn't dry up while we were going over to the ER |
Some might say that it was a waste of time to go to the Urgent Care and then have to go to the Emergency room after all that, but it really wasn't. The doctor at the Urgent Care called up the emergency room doctor and gave a detailed diagnosis and update and sent over the pictures and papers. When we got to the Emergency room everyone (dr's, nurses, respiratory person dude, etc.) was already updated and ready to move along with the procedure. I was very impressed.
First, they had to give Gareth an IV. I thought Gareth would scream when they poked him (I know from experience that getting an IV is not fun at ALL) but he didn't even flinch. I guess all the pain from the actual injury gave him some good pain tolerance. After he was all set and we had the doctor, three nurses and the respiratory person dude in position, they gave him the medication that would help him sleep. It's this thing called conscious sedation. I don't know exactly what it means but it didn't put him in a deep sleep and it only required a respiratory person dude (yeah, i don't know the exact term...)--instead of an anesthesiologist--to be there. While we were all standing around waiting for Gareth to fall asleep, he begin to be a bit loopy. At one point he said to one of the nurses "Where is the sun?" and she said "In the sky." and he said "It comes up over the mountains and goes across the sky and then goes away at night." and she said "yes, it does." Then a few minutes later, to the same nurse, he said "You have a watch." and she said "what?" (because his words were getting pretty slurred) so he said "You have a watch on." and then he all-of-a-sudden sat up and reached over toward her to touch her watch. The other nurses pulled him back and held him down (apparently they don't want him moving around much while he's falling asleep). So then he looked at the nurse and said "What time is it?" and then he fell asleep. It was pretty funny/sad to see him like that.
Once he was asleep, they numbed him all up. The nurses and the respiratory person dude had to all hold him down (he was wiggling too much in his sleep). They had to keep assuring me that he wasn't feeling anything and wasn't hurting. After they stitched above his eye, his lip, and his gums, they left him alone to wake up on his own. By this time it was about 8pm. I think in his mind, it was bed time because he was not waking up. After about 45 minutes, the doctor came in and poked him a few times (with his finger) Gareth finally woke up.
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| Starting to wake up. |
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| A close-up of the stitches. |
We left the hospital at about 9pm. Gareth hadn't eaten since noon and I was supposed to give him some major pain killers when we got home (which required him to have food in his stomach) so I decided to get him some food on the way home. The tricky part was that his teeth were still knocked loose and we didn't want to put pressure on them until he was able to see a dentist the next day so I got him some ICE CREAM! When we got home, he was getting lots of attention from his grandparents and aunts and uncle (they were all admiring his battle wounds) sitting at the island eating ice cream. It was then that he said this: "Mom, this is the best day ever." I'm pretty sure that he was only saying that because a) he was still pretty groggy and b) he was eating ice cream for dinner.
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| Here he is saying "Mom, this is the best day ever." |
The next day at the dentist, we got xrays that showed that the tooth had been knocked out of its socket but it wasn't broken. The dentist didn't want to pull the tooth because he didn't want to rip out all the stitches that were in the gums right above it. We went back for a check up two weeks later and discovered that the gums above one of the teeth have receded (there is a break in the gums and we can see the tooth all the way to the root) but when his permanent tooth grows in it will bring some new gums with it (so the dentist says). The other front tooth has turned a light shade of grey. We have another appointment in a couple weeks to decide if we should leave them there and let them fall out on their own or go ahead and pull them.
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| Gareth and Ronan hanging out at the dentists office. (watching a movie) |
Gareth has amazed me throughout this whole ordeal. Sure, he screamed when it first happened but through the ER and the days afterward when his lip was so swollen and his eye was black he didn't complain or whine at all (except for the one time when he said he was too embarrassed to go into the store because of his 'fat lip').
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| Three days later and STILL swollen. Poor kid. |
Oh and I bet you're wondering what exactly happened to cause all this? Well we didn't really know since nobody actually saw it happen. A few days after, we took Gareth outside and he showed us. Apparently he had been running towards the fire table (it's like a fire pit, but in a table) at full speed but he tripped and went flying face-first right into the edge. Poor kid.
And the job interview in Florida? Still don't know yet, but it's looking positive.
