On raising a boy--Part 2

Tuesday morning about 8:45 Henry was playing in his room while I was across the hall getting Ava dressed. I had asked him several times to get dressed because we have a music class we all go to on Tuesday mornings. I could hear him monkeying around when there was a thump and then crying. You have to know Henry to know that he doesn't cry from pain very often. About 10 seconds later he stumbled out, hand on his head, gushing with blood. I know that head wounds tend to bleed more than most so I tried to keep my cool until I really saw the wound. I grabbed a towel, blotted it off, and then started to panic (inside only of course). It was fairly sizable and I knew instantly that he needed stitches. Thankfully he calmed down quickly enough to hold the towel on his head while I ran down to our plethora of medical supplies from Carl's days working for McKesson. We had some sterile gauze and a wrap and I quickly bandaged him up and called Carl to come home. Our pediatrician said he could stitch him up and since our medical bills have been exorbitant, this sounded like a good option. We had to wait about an hour but the bleeding was at bay and Carl went back to work and met us at the doctor's office. The stitching was fairly uneventful except that the doctor struck a blood vessel that had remained in tact and Henry bled all over the table, down onto the doctor's pants and onto the floor...and Carl almost passed out. Henry was a trooper though and was not in pain as they numbed him first with a topical agent and then with Lidocane. Here is the visit to the doctor's office in photos.


Henry with mom's banadage job. I told him I thought he looked like an NBA player!


The wound.



The topical anesthetic in the wound.


After with a bandage covering the stitches. They both look a little pale don't you think?


The stitches (I had to capture this while he was sleeping as he's not keen to attention being drawn to it!).