*Since it's #throwbackthursday, I'm doing a repost today. This was originally posted on February 27th, 2012, I just made a few edits and touched it up a bit. Enjoy!
After a fun weekend filled with friends, relaxing, church, snow and a trip to the indoor water park, it was a morning of getting back to business. Tim was getting ready for work, Luke was packing up his backpack for school and Jack and I were getting ready to go to preschool.
Sometimes, Jack takes his own sweet time in the shower and I have to remind him that there might be a time crunch if he doesn't get his butt in gear. The shower seems to be his stage and he sings to his heart's content while locked inside the tiny bathroom. Normally, he won't even sing along with us in the car. With the shampoo and body wash as his only audience members, he'll make up his own tune to artfully serenade the soap at the top of his lungs. Some mornings, I'll just hang around outside the bathroom door, listening. That will turn my grumpy, non-coffee mood back right again.
He had been in there for a while so I tromped down the stairs to give him a gentle reminder. When I peeked in the bathroom, the shower was turned off. The mirror was still foggy and steam came rolling out as I opened the door. I expected to see a soggy preschooler head, wrapped in his Lightening McQueen towel, but a naked Jack was in the fetal position on the bottom of the shower stall. That was weird.
When I asked him what was going on, a calm and serene voice came out of the stall, "I'm stuck."
"How are you stuck?" I opened up the shower door.
"My finger..." His left pinky was stuck in one of the holes of the shower drain cover. It was stuck past the second knuckle.
Keep in mind, this is a child who fuh-reaks out if his shoes aren't tied tight enough. Since there were no hysterics, I didn't take him quite seriously. I giggled and called for Tim to come downstairs. I figured we would get this situation fixed in a few seconds. Easy peasy.
When Tim came downstairs, we realized it might be more serious than I previously thought. Tim tried plain old pulling. We tried soap and lotion and water and ice. Nothing worked. Both of us kept calm faces but we were internally panicking.
Luke quietly cried in the corner of the room. His empathetic super power was working overtime so he knew it might be serious.
I grabbed to toolbox, madly dug through it to find the necessary item. I finally found the screw driver and tossed it to Tim. He unscrewed the drain cover so we could get better leverage. Jack's finger was puffing up and turning a strange color. We were running out of options so we decided to head to the ER.
There was also the puzzle of how to get him dressed so he wouldn't freeze to death in the sub-zero North Dakota winter terrain. The lower half was easy but finding a shirt he could wiggle the huge piece of metal through an armhole proved more difficult. We found a huge t-shirt that workd but there was no way he could wear his much needed coat. Tim grabbed a blanket, swaddled him tightly and carried his little butt off to the van.
On the way, we dropped Luke off at school with the promise that the doctors and nurses would know what to do. We also promised to return to let him know that Jack was okay once we got finished at the hospital. That seemed to ease his worry a little so he soldiered on to perform his Kindergarten duties.
At the ER, Jack marched in, calm and brave, with a shower drain cover for an over-sized ring. At the front in-take desk, the lady asked why we were there. Both Tim and I were at a loss for words, "Ummmmm...." We both just looked over to Jack and he poked his hand out of his blanket swaddle and held it up like he was carrying an Olympic victory torch.
"Oh! Well now. Let's get you in here straight away!"
They tried multiple methods. Jelly got smeared on his finger first, but that didn't work. Then they tried wrapping his finger with some sort of twine in order to compress it. Still stuck. They brought him over to the sink to run it under cold water. Fail. Another nurse brought in a bucket and plunged the pinky and drain cover into some icy water. After a few minutes in the ice, they tried again to pull it off. Freeeeeeeedommmmmm! The finger and the circular metal piece were separate entities again. Hallelujah!
The trusty van took us back home. Midway we stopped by Luke's school to give him the update and then started back on our not-so-typical Monday.
We are averaging one ER visit per year and I'm not liking those stats. Oh, the life of daredevil kids. Jack's first two visits to the ER were in Charleston, the third in Meridian, now the fourth in Grand Forks. With Luke making an appearance in the Bellingham ER at two days old, our tally is five visits in six years, coast to coast and in the middle. I'd be fine with taking a break from those visits for a few years or twenty. But since we like to live life on the edge and stick our fingers in shower drains, I'm thinking that's not going to happen. I can cross my unrestrained fingers and hope for the best though.
**Since this story was written, Jack went to the E.R. one more time in Grand Forks for an extremely high fever on Christmas Eve, then again when he fell off a playground toy in Edmonds, and then another time, just a couple months ago, here in our new town. So far, we haven't impoved the rate of emergency visits per year. Lovely.
Different finger, different town a couple years later.
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