Elias dropped a major rock on his toe this morning.
Last night Ben managed to catch a garter snake, and we had him in a cage (the snake, not Ben). We were looking around for things to feed him. It's been really dry so worms were hard to come by. I found one fat slug, and then I started to try to find crickets. One major place to score crickets is under these big flat rocks we have on the terrace. I lifted one up, and wow– tons of big robust crickets! I caught one, set the rock down, and turned my back to put the cricket in with his new friend the snake. While I was doing this, Elias chose to try the same move. Except he was not strong enough to hold the rock for long. Apparently it slipped out of his hands and landed right on his left big toe (he was barefoot). He screamed instantly, and just from his tone I knew it was not a normal boo-boo.
I snatched him up and rushed him into the triage unit in the downstairs bathroom. Blood was gushing out. I put it under running water and determined immediately that it was beyond the scope of Spiderman band-aids. I told Isaac to get his shoes on, STAT, found my wallet and my phone. I needed many hands to do this while also gently cradling the patient and keeping his foot wrapped in a bloody onesie.
The new wonderful emergency room, the construction of which I've been eagerly watching for months, opened on August 1st! That means that instead of driving 25 minutes into Akron to the big, old, crowded yucky one downtown, I can now drive five minutes to the sparkling, new empty one with a pediatric unit on site. So happy! And now, during all the years to come of raising these… slightly accident-prone boys… I have this resource at my fingertips!
Can you imagine? The doctor who saw us today was the same one who helped Elias when he drank the Benadryl a while back. When he came in, I said, "Oh! Dr. Gupta! We've met. This is the little guy who drank the Benadryl." And he said, "Oh, hi Elias. " Old pals! He examined the situation and ordered x-rays, while another lady came in with some Tylenol with Codeine and two popsicles. Soon Elias was glassy eyed, not crying, and watching Word World on PBS kids. The x-ray process was not all that fun. Elias just couldn't accept that the huge monster looming over him was merely a camera. But it was not broken. That's the main thing.
So they just cleaned it off and wrapped it in a huge amount of gauze. He's supposed to stay off it for at least 24 hours and then soak it twice a day until it's all healed up. He'll need a Band-aid on it until it doesn't hurt anymore. The whole thing will be some months to lose the nail and gain the new one, and I expect he'll be hobbled by it for a few days.
Poor little lamb. He's conked, with his huge blue foot on a pillow. Oh well! At least we were saved from having a dull, normal day of recuperation after my trip!