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Monday, January 18, 2010

Another trip to accident and emergncy

Until very recently the only person in the house who had been to accident and emergency was me, when Matthew had managed to graze my cornea mid tantrum. That all changed in December when Lucy fell off a chair breaking her leg in the process. She has now managed to double her tally having lost her second fight with a chair.

It was lunchtime on Friday, I had finished my lunch and Matthew and Lucy were finishing off theirs. Tumble Tots was looming so I went to gather shoes and visit the toilet so we could make a swift exit. As I came back into the room Lucy and Matthew were chasing around the table, Lucy had a hovis digestive in her hand and Matthew seemed to be trying to relieve her of the burden. I yelled at them to stop, but it was too late.

It is not clear if Lucy stopped and Matthew bumped into her or if he pushed her or she just fell. The end result was lots of screaming, very loud screaming, lots of blood and a hole in Lucy's face. I knew from the look of it that she would need stitches but I checked with my neighbour who used to be a nurse and she agreed so off we went to minor injuries. I waited, a bit in shock, and Mr T arrived. We were ushered into a treatment room and Lucy was examined,
'It will need stitching,' the nurse explained 'but under a general anaesthetic. At that point I cried, I don't normally cry in public but this time I did, a lot.
It turned out that as the cut went through Lucy's lip and into her face it would need to be stitched by an expert, so we had to go to A and E where we were met by the same people who had seen us when Lucy broker her leg.

She was admitted but as they had several emergencies we were allowed to come home overnight as they couldn't operate. We returned at 730 on Saturday morning and she eventually has her op which lasted only a few minutes at about 130. She was allowed to leave at just after 530, and although it was horrible I did feel a little bit lucky as some of the other children who were in the ward were struggling with worse injuries than Lucy.

It just goes to show that you never can tell what will happen. I didn't dream that she would be having an operation or having another accident involving a chair, nor that they could become so dangerous. It seems that it was contributed to by her cast, as it is over her knee she couldn't break her fall so rather than steady herself by bending her knees she fell forwards and bashed her face, nine more sleeps until the cast is removed and hopefully the stitches will have dissolved by then as well and maybe I will be able to look at Lucy without feeling guilty.