You leave me in stitches, literally.

Ever have one of those days that catches you totally off guard? Today was that day for us.

It's hot and humid in Minneapolis, so Luke and I took off for a walk right away this morning. Half way through our walk we had another stroller incident, which left Luke face first on the street. The stroller ride down the hill a couple weeks ago was funny. This one was not. Fortunately, Luke was strapped in. Unfortunately, he wasn't wearing a helmet. He's got some road rash on his chin and his top teeth punctured his bottom lip. There was plenty of blood, but fortunately it stopped gushing pretty quickly. Sammy, Luke and I ran home as fast as we could and got Luke in the shower to wash off the blood and assess the situation. (I'm sure you'll understand why I didn't take time to snap a picture at this point!) He was relatively calm, but would cry if I wasn't holding him and continued to drool a lot. After a quick consult with the on-call nurse, we headed off to the emergency room to get his lip checked out.

I cannot remember ever being in an emergency room. Luckily I've led a pretty "safe" life. The only knowledge I have of life in the ER is from soap operas and the show Scrubs... this trip was much less eventful than anything you'd see on tv. :) One surprise was how long we had to wait for a doctor. Luke fell asleep twice while we were waiting. I comforted myself by thinking, "There must be lots of people worse off than Luke that they have to work on... if his injury was really bad, they'd be in here right away." Another interesting thing is that there was no clock in our room. That was good thinking on their part as I would have been out at the nurses' station every 10 minutes asking if they had forgotten about Luke. (I have since learned that a 2-3 hour ER experience is the norm... too bad they don't tell you that in the parenting books!)

The doctor finally made his way in to see Luke and after some impressive screams, Dr. Egger informed us that Luke should be stitched up and he suggested doing it without sedation. That meant wrapping Luke up like a baby burrito while sewing his lip. I knew that Luke would have a bigger problem with being constrained than the actual stitching of his lip. A really nice tech came in to assist the doctor. His job was to wrap Luke up onto a body board and then hold Luke's head still while also keeping his lips open. The man was a saint! Another saint arrived in the room just before the festivities began. Aunt Beth happened to call just as I was gathering Luke up to go to the ER. After she made a scheduled call for work, she came down to Ridges to check up on Luke. Actually, I think she was checking up on me more than Luke. It was really nice to have her there!

I held Luke's hands, the tech held Luke's head, the doctor held the needle and dissolving stitches, and Aunt Beth held us all together. Luke gave us a run for the money. Here's kind of a funny part of the experience: After the first 2 stitches, it felt like the temperature in the room rose 20 degrees. The tech was bald and sweat started to bead up on his head. He looked at me and said, "Man, the only time I get this sweaty is when I'm giving CPR. I'm going to need a shower after this and I've only been at work for 15 minutes!" We all had a laugh... even Luke stopped crying and peeked through the sterile cloth to see what was going on. The tech did towel off after we were finished. :)

There's a total of 4 stitches in Luke's lip. His gums are also swollen. He's doing fine... he's apprehensive to put anything on his lip and he can't really chomp on solids for several days. I've gotten 2 doses of penicillin down his throat (followed by pieces of fudgsicle). Only 14-18 doses to go. :)

I'm sure I'll look back at this day in the future and it won't be nearly as traumatic as it seems now. I pray we don't need to make any future trips to the ER, but knowing Luke, I'm guessing we might make our way back there once or twice more. One thing is for sure, any future accidents won't come as a result of "adventure strollering". I'm shopping for a safety belt to tie between the stroller and my waist so Luke can't ever leave me again.