Fingers + Doors Don't Mix

A couple weeks ago on December 3 I was home with my kiddos and was watching a friend's daughter. Chase & Laney were downstairs playing while Taylie & I were upstairs cleaning up from lunch. Luckily on this particular day Kelly came home early because I had tobacco buys later that day. Chase & Laney rush upstairs to use the bathroom. I call from the kitchen to go in one at a time. The next thing I know I hear some blood curtling screams from Taylie. I rush to the bathroom to find her finger shut in the door. I open the door grab her and after a quick look realize it is really bad - her fingertip on her left ring finger is barely hanging on. I grab a wad of tissues to try & get the blood & to make sure she doesn't do any more damage to it. I start franticly yelling for Kelly. Chase felt terrible. As soon as he came out of the bathroom he said "Don't be mad at me." I quickly explained it was an accident. Kelly comes running out & I explain what happened as calmly as I could. I told him it was bad & we needed to go. He is thinking a little pinch & doesn't understand why I am freaking out until I remove the tissues & he sees it. We rush to the bathroom & try to get a make shift wrap around it until we get to the doctor. We get the kids in the car after grabbing shoes, coats & the diaper bag. I wasn't quite sure where to take her so I called the nearest instacare to see if we could go there or if we needed to head up to the ER. They say to go to them, they'll triage it & then see what we needed to do. The 10 minute drive to the instacare felt like an eternity. Taylie was in so much pain & screaming & there was nothing I could do. We rush into the instacare & the receptionist is taking her sweet time getting our name, address, phone number, insurance information, etc when she asked for the copay I snapped and said can I take care of that later! She let me & then they took us back. The doctor looked at it & said he needed some xrays to see if it got the bone. If it did they would have to send us to a plastic surgeon in Salt Lake if not he could take care of it. They gave her some ibuprofen to help take the edge of the pain, but it did nothing. Finally a sucker did the trick. She'd never had one & was in complete heaven eating that. That finally stopped her screaming for a bit. That helped calm my nerves. They took us in to get x-rays and oh my. It is very hard to keep a 1 year old on your lap, wrapped in a lead vest & try to keep her injured hurt finger straight in 3 different poses using these crazy wedges. Finally we got those done. After looking at the x-rays they concluded that it barely missed the bone & the doc there would be able to stitch it back up. They came & gave her a shot to numb the finger. That shot must have hurt because the sucker stopped working to silence her screams. Then we waited until the finger went numb. Meanwhile while all this was happening I was calling the police officers & buyer to cancel my buys, calling my friend to tell her I couldn't pick up her son & where her daughter was, giving updates to Kelly in the waiting room & letting my family know what was going on. Thanks goodness for text messaging. Once the finger was numb they were able to stitch it up. They showed me where the bone was (I don't know why I kept looking at it, but I did - I couldn't get the images out of my head for days! Sorry no pics of that I don't ever want to be reminded of how it looked) I took five stitches in her little finger. It was such a relief once it was bandaged up & we could leave. It was such a traumatic experience & I felt so helpless as the mom. I wanted to take away her pain, but all I could do was hold & comfort her which didn't seem to do much. This is the worst mom experience I have had to go through as my 4 1/2 years as a mother. I was surprised at how well I kept it together. I only snapped at the receptionist, I didn't cry and even though I thought I was going to I didn't pass out or puke in the bushes as we were leaving. As we were driving home Kelly told me that he didn't know how I did it, that her screams from the waiting room were almost too much for him to bear. It was a terrible ordeal but I am grateful for the small things: that Kelly was home, the sucker, qualified healthcare personnel & the calming spirit I felt. Here she is later that night. What a trooper...all smiles. She was clinging & tired but was happy all night!

Here is her finger all stitched up.

It's looking much better now. This isn't the best pic, but she wasn't cooperating tonight.