Giving the Finger

It's been awhile since my last post because life in our house has suddenly just gone off the deep end. I mean, I fall into bed every night and fall asleep in minutes, only to wake up eight hours later and run like a mad woman again until bed time. It's a cycle I just can't seem to break.

I'll recap about our 4th of July weekend a little later in this post, but first I need to write the post that goes along with today's title.

Today, Grace gave me the finger. Specifically, the tip of her finger.

This week, Kimberly, Todd's best friend's daughter, is here visiting and helping out with the twins. She loves the twins and makes my life fantastic when she visits. I look forward to her being here every time!

So this morning, Kimberly, Devin, Faith, Grace and I were in our living room. The kids were all playing and everything was normal.

Grace was walking along between the couch (where I was sitting) and the coffee table holding her little toy bongo drums.

All of the sudden, the poor thing took a spill after stepping on a toy truck. The bongo drums went flying and down went Gracie.

She, of course, began to cry and I, of course, picked her up. But when I did, I saw blood on her lips. My first thought was that she had cut her lip on a tooth. But when I got her onto my lap, I realized that she was pouring blood. Gushing it.

So I flew into the kitchen to set her on the counter and figure out where the red stuff was coming from. The mouth? A cut on her leg? Where the heck was origin of all of this???

And then I saw it. The tip of the ring finger on her right hand was dangling. It was almost off.

I shouted out my findings, a few expletives and declared that I needed to get her to the ER.

Kimberly, being the angel that she is, helped me get Grace in the car, got my purse for me and called Todd to let him know what happened.

Meanwhile, I drove like a crazy woman all the way to the hospital, with my hazards on and blaring my horn as I took illegal turns and sped around other cars. I was a woman on a mission.

I drove the car up to the porte corchere at the emergency room and pulled Gracie out of the back seat. I left the car there and hours later, realized that I had parked in such a way that others couldn't really get through the driveway. *Gulp* I hope no one else had an emergency today.

I hauled bottom into the ER screaming, "Help! My daughter nearly severed her finger!" At this point, both Grace and I were covered in blood.

We were taken back, assessed, and gotten to a doctor in a matter of minutes. The doctor took a look at the finger, wrapped it up and gave me the scoop.

"We're going to need to put her under to reattach this. When was the last time she had anything to eat?"

"8:30 this morning."

"We can't put her under until it's been six hours since she last ate, so we'll have to wait until 2:30 to do the procedure."

With that, Grace was given some Tylenol with Codeine and we were left to wait five hours for the "okay" to reattach the dangling digit.

So we killed time watching TV, alternately going to get stuff to eat (Todd had left work to join us at the ER) and trying to get Gracie to rest.

Right on cue, though, around 2:00, Grace was given a drug similar to Valium that made her loopy and relaxed her enough to allow the nurses to get the IV in her arm.

Once all of the pieces were in place, Gracie Too was given a sedative that knocked her out in seconds. 45 minutes later, she had two internal stitches, four external stitches and the hope that any nerve damage will heal with time due to her young age.

Our little one slowly woke up, demonstrated that she could drink fluids and keep them down and we were discharged. Now we just have to keep that finger clean and dry for two weeks. This is where I just laughed.

It's all pretty typical, really. Grace is just like Devin and Devin is always two steps away from the ER. It would only stand to reason that she, too, would end up at our local emergency room.

What's a major mystery is how her finger got involved.

Kimberly confirmed that while there was plenty of blood on the floor and kitchen counter, there was no blood on the toys. As we expected, the toy that was held/thrown and the one that was tripped over did not cause the gash.

The only thing we could come up with is that when Gracie fell forward, she caught herself on her hands and her front teeth hit one of her fingers upon impact. That would explain why she had blood on her mouth when I first picked her up.

So really, this is the utter definition of freak accident. "One in a million, Doc. One in a million."

I'd planned to blog about what else we've been up to, but I'm a little weary and am looking forward to the date I have with my latest novel. I'll blog more when I can. If that day ever arrives. :)

So this is