Mere weeks after our last hospital adventure, Tate needed a turn at the hospital experience.
About a week ago, Tate was walking down a porch while running his arm over the railing. A good-sized splinter stabbed him in the bicep, on the inside a couple inches above the elbow. We worked for hours that afternoon trying to get, what we thought was a small splinter, out of his arm. He was quite hysterical about it and we weren’t able to pull anything out.
We called the nurse-line and an immediate-care office for advice. Neither of them provided much help or guidance. We already had an appointment with our pediatrician to get Jasper’s stitches taken out on the next Monday, so we held off a day to double-book both boys with the doctor.
The pediatrician looked at it and advised that we soak the arm to get it to work itself out. She also suggested that we make an appointment with the surgeon, just in case. Unfortunately, the surgeon wasn’t available for another week. So, we got a prescription for some antibiotics and set about waiting to see the surgeon.
The appointed day arrived. We saw the surgeon and she wanted to get Tate in quickly. There wasn’t much infection, but she was sure that there was still some wood in his arm and probably some other bad stuff too. Our hospital appointment was for 7am the next morning.
Tate and I got up early and walked over to the hospital. We were hoping to get in an out in a few hours, maybe even before Megan needed to leave for work. But alas, it was not to be so quick. We ended up waiting. And waiting. Then they’d move us to another room and we’d wait. And wait. Then a different nurse or doctor would come talk to us. Then we waited some more.
One of the nurses that visited showed tate the gas mask that he would wear that would put him to sleep. She explained very nicely and patiently how he would go to sleep and when he woke up, they would be all done.
We arrived at 7am and finally made it into the OR at about 10:30am. I had to leave him as he went into the OR. One of the nurses came out a few minutes later to tell me that he did great listening and following instructions, he got giggly with the gas and fell asleep in three breaths.
The surgeon came out about 30 minutes later to report that they pulled out about 1.5 or 2 inches of splinter from his arm. She said that they also cleaned out some infection, but it really looked pretty good. I still had to wait a bit before he was all set up in the post-op recovery area.
When they finally called me back, Tate was still sound asleep. He slept for about an hour after I got to him, but once he woke up, he was up! It didn’t take long for him to get back up to his usual pace.
Unfortunately, we still had to wait. The recovery nurse took several rounds of vitals and we had to wait for the anesthesiologist to come and OK him for discharge. And so we waited. And waited.
It was after 1pm before we were able to get out of the hospital.We went for pizza, picked up some more medicine and finally headed home. It was just before 3pm when we got home. Tate was running at full steam. I sat down and promptly fell asleep. Luckily Tate was jabbering away or else I would have slept through the time we needed to go get Jasper.
Everything turned out well and the wound is healing nicely. In a few weeks it will be as if nothing ever happened.
