You know those parents that threaten, threaten and threaten their kids some more; all without following through? Not us, no, we do not make empty threats. We make sure that they happen even if several weeks have passed.
For the past 4 months or so, the most common phrase heard in our house is something along the lines of "Stop doing that to the dog. He will be fed up with your teasing and he'll bite you and you will bleed a lot. You will probably even need stitches. Is that what you want?". Well, as of last night, this is no longer a threat.
We didn't see it happen, but we heard the screams and Sanjay explained later that he was hitting Caboose. He ended up with 2 gashes in his lower lip that luckily did not penetrate all the way through, but still required a visit to the ER. I think they put 2 stitches on one side and 4-5 on the other. Ironically, some friends were over for dinner at the time. One of them, a doctor, was no kidding 10 minutes earlier just telling us about how he stitched up his daughter's chin at home the previous night. Luckily, he saw Sanjay's wound and advised us to have him seen since stitches should really be given within the first 4 hours. He was apologetic about not having his suture kit with him in the car. :)
We made our way to the hospital ER, as advised by our on-call pediatrician's nurse since the bite was to his face. In the hospital room, Sanjay was having a blast with the TV remote and had more than enough time to really get settled in. I'm glad it wasn't a true emergency. We got there just around shift-change so that added some delays. And, either every nurse wants to see a 5 year old with a dog bite or they have a quota to reach or something because I think we met about 8 different people in the span of 3 hours that we spent at the hospital.
A not-so-short summary of our 3 hour hospital experience:
The triage nurse checked us in, took temps, got his weight and whatnot, then assigned us a room. 10-15 minutes pass. The ending-shift nurse came in to tell us that he was leaving and a new nurse would be coming in. 10-15 minutes pass. Another chick came in for some more paperwork and to take our insurance card. 10-15 minutes pass. Then the new-shift nurse came in, put some gloves on and looked at his lip (this was the 3rd person to have a look at it). 10-15 minutes pass.
The doctor came in, introduced himself, took a look and determined that stitches were necessary for both sides. He said he'd be right back. After 10 minutes, yet another nurse, Eric, came in to drop off the sterile kit for sutures. 20 minutes later the doctor came back with yet another new nurse to presumably start working on Sanjay. Within 5 minutes, he stepped out and about 5 minutes later the nurse says to me, "Where did he go?". Which is exactly what I was wondering. She went to check on him and came back, flushed the wound out and says to me, "I think he wants me to go ahead and do the stitches, but I usually don't like to do the kids because the parents aren't comfortable with it". So, I kind of act like I didn't hear her because I did prefer that the doctor put the stitches in. We wait and wait some more and she says, "Do you mind if I go ahead and put one in this side?". We were both kind of tired of waiting on the doc, so I agreed.
I don't think Sanjay realized that stitches means a needle and thread will be going through your lip, so when he saw everything he was naturally freaking out. The lip was quivering, the head was turning... I'm not sure how she managed to get that one stitch in. And, with all my previous medical training, I'm thinking "that's going to need another stitch". It was actually quite obvious, but there was no way Sanjay was going to be still enough for her to get another one in there and frankly she didn't see the need. The doctor probably heard the screaming, so he finally returned to the room and after a quick look decided to put another stitch on that side. This time he had a really cool cloth to hold up so that Sanjay couldn't see what was going on. This would have been a key component from the very beginning, because at this point Sanjay knew what was going on behind the cloth and although the nurse was holding his head and I was holding his hands he managed to wiggle and cry enough that the doctor was considering an alternative.
We still had the bigger gash on the other side of his lip to close up. He suggested sedation. The sedation would take effect within 10 minutes, but it could take up to an hour for him to come out of it. It was already past 9pm and I was ready to go home, but I understood his predicament. Sanjay was just not cooperating. So, again the nurses and doctors leave the room to get the equipment and prepare to move us to another room for sedation. I am explaining to Sanjay what's going to happen and he really does not want to do the "sleepy medicine". In fact, he was quite adamant about it. In the meantime, another new nurse peeks her head in to grab some bar code stickers from his chart and I flag her down. I told her that we want to try one more time before we jump to sedation. She looks at me like I'm a nutcase because clearly the doctor has already started all the procedures for sedation. I told her to please let us talk to the doctor and maybe try one more time since Sanjay was going to try really hard to remain calm and still. She rolled her eyes and left the room. Yeah, real friendly this one was.
So, 10 minutes later the doctor returns with another nurse that we are just meeting for the first time and he says, "so, you want to try one more time?". The nurse takes her position behind Sanjay's head and starts talking very calmly to him and asking him questions to keep his mind off what was happening. She was incredible. The doctor prepares a needle with more numbing medication as the feeling in Sanjay's lip was starting to come back with all the passing time. Sanjay sees the needle and starts to freak out but the nurse explains that it's just to make it numb again. We held the cloth up, the doctor starts stitching and Sanjay is amazingly calm. I asked him to close his eyes and I was talking to him about the cartoons that were on the TV. The nurse bribed him with a popsicle if he was well-behaved. He did it! I was so proud of him for being able to overcome his fears. The doctor was amazed, too... he was convinced even this second time wouldn't work. When he left the room, he gave a 2 thumbs up sign to the nurses station. At this point, they had all met Sanjay and were interested in updates. Even the grumpy nurse got a smile on her face and it's a good thing, too because she was the one that discharged us. We made it out of there by 10pm and headed straight to the pharmacy to fill a precautionary prescription to fight infection.
It was a late night, but Sanjay's lip looks good and hopefully it's a lesson learned, albeit a painful and expensive one. I have my doubts, but let's see. The law requires the hospital to submit documentation to authorities for dog bites, so it's likely that we'll have to prove Caboose's innocence for the weeks to come, but we are prepared to do that.
