Good As New

If you had asked either Wally or I a couple of weeks ago which child we thought would be the first one to go to the ER we both would have responded "Chloe!!!" And this is why. Chloe likes to jump, climb, spin, hang, etc. One day she said "Mom, do you wanna see this?" She climbed on the ottoman crossed her arms over her chest and just fell from the ottomon to the couch about a foot and a half away. I told her "Chloe, I don't ever want to see you do that again." She promptly responded, "Mom, close your eyes." But back to the ER question, we would have guessed it would be Chloe, but we would have been wrong. It was Kelsie.

On the last Monday night before school started, we took our family to the pool for FHE. Our friends, the Ritchies, had the same idea and our kids were thrilled to have their friends to splash with in the pool. We were all just visiting when Kelsie and Brynley got our attention and told us to watch them. They were doing back flips in the pool off a little ledge. My mom instincts screamed "DANGER!" but I ignored them since the girls had been doing flips all night. As soon as Kelsie pushed off the ledge, I could tell that she didn't extend back far enough. She hit her head on the wall on her way up. When she came up out of the water I was trying to be calm. I looked at her and said "Kelsie?" She was holding her forehead and crying as she came over to me. As soon as she moved her hand, large amounts of blood began rushing from her head. I went into panic mode and screamed for her to get out of the pool. I ran (at the pool! Dangerous, I know!) and grabbed a towel and had her hold it on her head. At this point she was screaming, probably from a mixture of pain and the horrified expression on my face. When the screaming subsided into just crying, I had her move the towel so I could see the damage. It was not good. There was a deep cut in her forehead and still lots of blood. I started screaming to Wally something about getting the kids out of the pool and having to go to the ER. Thank goodness the Ritchies were there. They offered to take Jack and Chloe to their house while we took care of Kelsie. So we took off to the nearest Urgent Care. Now, if I had been calm under pressure and had really thought about it, I would have grabbed my towel and maybe dried off a little bit. But I wasn't calm and I didn't. And I regretted it the whole time I stood dripping wet in my swimsuit in the ER.

When we got to the ER, Kelsie started crying again. She was still in pain, but was now worried about the possibility of needing stitches. The nurse called us back and looked at her cut. He told her that she had a 50/50 chance of getting stitches. Kelsie was relieved at the thought that she might not need stitches and started to relax a bit. What he didn't tell her was that it was a 50% chance of stitches and a 50% chance of having staples! Good thing he left that out because she was pretty freaked out. The doctor came in a little while later and told her that fortunately for her, the cut was right in her hairline and he could just staple her back together. To me, staples sounded way worse than stitches, but I wasn't about to admit that to Kelsie. They cleaned her cut, numbed it, and then the doctor stapled her head back together. I have to admit that it was pretty gross, but for some reason I couldn't look away. The good thing was NO SHOTS! In the end, the cut was a little less than an inch long. It required three staples and a week to heal, but now she is good as new! She was extremely brave and we feel extremely lucky to have her.