Lola's Big Boo-Boo

I am a klutz.  Raina is a klutz.  Lola, on the other hand, has great awareness of her body in space and she is destined for great hand-eye-body coordination sports.  (I can run in a straight line.  And that is all.)  She’s never really hurt herself jumping around or running in circles or whatever roughhouse craziness she devises.

But.  Wednesday night, after her bath, Lola was jumping up and down in the living room and she tripped.  And fell forward.  And slammed her head on the end table.  And her head ricocheted off the top of the table to hit the bottom shelf on the table. 

It was horrifying to see.  I shouted “Oh my god!” and Lola immediately replied, “I’m okay, I’m okay!” as I grabbed her and hugged her.  Then the pain set in.  Lola started screaming hysterically and all adults ran to the scene.  (Having three adults in the house is fantastic.  I cannot stress this enough.)  I identified that Lola’s ear was injured; Samantha stayed with her while I assembled all the items needed to stop the bleeding; Eric started grabbing all the items we’d need for the hospital.  And there was no question that a hospital trip was in order.  Imagine having an earring and then someone rips it out by pulling down through the ear’s flesh; this is the injury that she had.  Yikes.

We left Raina with Samantha – again, three adults in the house is a wonderful thing – and headed out to the ER.  We waited and waited and waited.  Lola read books, drank complimentary apple juice, watched the Mizzou basketball game, ran up and down the halls, and chattered.  Her energy and spirits were up, she didn’t complain about her ear hurting anymore, and Eric and I started wondering whether a hospital trip was really necessary.  We suddenly had uncomfortable visions of $500 band-aid hospital bill.

Then the ER doctor started cleaning her ear and we saw the injury was even worse than we had thought.  The ER doctor was very frank with us.  The hospital did not have the capacity to put Lola to sleep and he was worried that she would jerk around and be unrestrained during the stitches surgery.  He thought we should switch to a different hospital where they could anesthetize her with more than a local anesthetic.  We convinced him that we could distract Lola during the procedure so we stayed.

Then we started prepping Lola.  We described that her ear would be sewn back together and told her that, at the hospital, the doctors are the boss and she had to do what the doctor said.  She agreed with us, but we knew it would take more than a verbal agreement to keep her calm.  So we sang songs and read books and waited patiently for the procedure.

Lola got the local anesthetic injection; 20 minutes later, she got another local anesthetic swabbed on her ear.  Then it was time to get the stitches.  Lola lay on her side and I read a story to her.  Then she pitifully said, “Ow, it hurts!” and whimpered and cried but never moved her head.  I kept reading the story but we started hearing more “ow!” statements and we could see that she was breaking. 

Luckily, we had an ace up our sleeve.  Eric pulled out his cell phone and started showing Lola her favorite kitty video.  Supercats to the rescue!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf_IIbT8HGk  She was transfixed by the kitty antics, actually cackled with glee multiple times, and was mostly distracted for the rest of the procedure.  (It helps that our kids have not been desensitized to television.  Also, smart phones are awesome.)  They wrapped her head like a mummy and she cuddled her hospital bag of medicine all the way home. 

All in all, Lola was a champ – very brave, very cooperative, and very spirited.  She was absolutely remarkable and we’re still amazed by her resilience.