No Longer in Stitches

Shane and I took Austin in to get his stitches removed on Thursday- exactly 7 days after he got them put in. Oddly, they were excited to go to the doctor's office, probably because they didn't know what was going on.
Austin's finger was a little red and swollen, he liked to pull at the stitches. In addition to that, the nurse commented a number of times that the stitches were very tight.
(I thought that funny. Wouldn't you want them fairly tight so as to hold the parts of the finger together? Not too tight so as not to cut through the tiny bit you're allowing to hold the stitch, of course, but tight enough so everything is held thoroughly shut. I'm no nurse though.)
She was tuggin' as carefully as she could and even had to pull out those big magnification goggles to get the last 2 stubborn ones.
Austin was a tiny bit more uncomfortable than before; no numbing agent this time. In between her tugging, he'd pull his hand away for me to hold for a second before putting it back up to keep trying. Otherwise, he just sat perfectly still and watched most of it all. When he got tired of watching (I think it was getting more painful too) he turned (just his body) and cuddled into me so he wouldn't have to see.
He was SUCH a brave little guy! He got a cool shiny silver bandaid that lasted until we got home. Then it fell off and we went back to the super sport bandaids that really stick.
Shane was a trooper too. Totally bored, watched for a few seconds a few different times but otherwise sat/stood back and waited for the ok to head out the door.
He's healing up well and actually seemed to enjoy the whole adventure. (Except the cutting part and the numbing needle part) I still get a bit sad everytime I see it, though I think that's going to last for a while. Sorry, no pictures. If I leave the bandaids off for long without watching him closely, he starts peeling at the dead skin and picking at the healing scar. And it's rather gross still.

Austin is His Father's Son

So I was actually planning on doing a big Blog catch-up this weekend, especially since I have yet to post Halloween pictures and it's almost Christmas. Ha, well, as some of you have heard, Austin trumped all plans yesterday with creating quite an adventure.

To set the scene, I was sitting in the living room, surrounded by gifts that needed wrapping. Things for such a variety of people that I'm sure I'll get something mixed up. As I'm wrapping, the boys are playing around me. Bags of gifts on one side, Austin on the other, I forge ahead- wrapping like a mad woman. You know how wiggley 2 year olds can be, so I don't really notice when he gets up and wanders off to the bare Christmas tree- only 4 feet away.
Thump, Bump, Cry. I look up and see Austin has rubbed blood on his head, so I jump up to see if he smacked his mouth on the entertainment center or something. Then I notice the knife I'd gotten for myself (it's a bright orange pareing knife, new and sharp) and the blood actually dripping from Austin's finger. Thankfully, we'd had a couple liquid spills that day, so I'd brought a handful of clean towels out to have on hand. Grab one of those to wrap around his hand until I can get him calm enough to look at it. Then I wished I hadn't. I never want to see my children's muscles laid open like that again.
Shane comes in and is terribly confused that I'm yelling for him to get pants, socks, and shoes on "RIGHT NOW" (that's the phrase I use to let him know I'm serious in every day life). Miracle- my little rag doll Shane DOES IT, by himself, no help, no tears, no questions. I get on the phone (because there's NO WAY I'm going to strap Austin into a car seat and let him bleed while I drive) to try to raise Brett, but he's not in his office. So I commit the crime of Airstation wives everywhere, calling the off-limits phone. Anyone recieving a call on that phone that's not a real life emergency automatically owes the whole crew beer. Took them a few minutes to find Brett after I told them it was urgent. To his credit, Brett didn't question me one bit when I declared that Austin had cut his finger and we needed Brett to come and take us to the Emergency Room. I guess it counts to get him off beer detail.
After hanging up, I walk Shane over to our next door neighbor's house to ask if they could keep him for awhile. Christina is wonderful and only asked if Shane had any allergies before she shewed us off to the hospital. Still waiting for Brett in the 5 minutes that seem like forever, I go back into the house and find Austin's binky, turn off the TV, and lock the door. We had started walking up the road when Brett pulled up (not because he was taking his time- which he definately wasn't, I just couldn't sit there and wait while my baby bled).
At the hospital, it was getting the info, calling the on-call doc of the day, repeating the story to the nurse and accepting compliments at how calm Austin was being. I don't know why Brett (and the nurse) kept wanting to see the cut, he got paler every time; but he held out until after the sewing started before needing "to take a walk to get a drink". I hated watching the blood well up out of the cut and the shots with the numbing agent were awful with the crying and struggling. I could let myself see the needle do it's thing, but the knot tying I was ok with. Austin was fascinated with the whole process once he couldn't feel the pain. He really liked watching the doc do her thing. Both the doctor and the nurse repeatedly commented on it, saying he'd grow up to be a wonderful surgeon the way he kept his head and was interested in the operation. I thought I counted 7 stitches, Brett (looking later) said he could only see 6. Either way, it did not beat the Banks Family Record of # of Stitches Recieved in the First Emergency Room Visit- which is Brett with 9 stitches. Or at least that's what he says.
He fell asleep as they were putting on the bandage. They used that cool tube gauze and one of those finger things. Unfortunately, that makes it hard for those of us without a cool finger thing to recreate the bandage job when he pulls it off 5 minutes after waking up back home.

Brett specifically wanted to get the pictures BEFORE I changed Austin into jammies, so you could see the blood on the sleeve and spotted down his front. *shivers* I still have to wash that.

Since Austin doesn't much like bandages in any form, we had to tape his 2 fingers together and wrap him up good to make sure it stayed on the required 48-72 hours.

The bandage alone makes it look much worse than it is. Later that evening, Austin was up jumping off the back of the couch to jump on the seats. I'll upload that video tomorrow. :)

Though I know it's bound to happen, I really don't want to do that again any time soon.