The toe story
Thursday I took Tommy to STAR and since they are a non-profit in a brand new facility, they haven’t yet built the offices bulding so there is no place for us to be during the lesson. Afetr a day of rain, I decided we’d just play in the car. At some point during the hour Sarah took off her shoes and I was stunned by the smell coming from her feet. I glanced and even though she moved quickly to hide them, I saw that her big toe was red, swollen and either bleeding or full of yucky puss. She refused to show me her foot so I said she WOULD be showing it to me when we got home. Skip ahead a few hours.
Sarah finally showed me her toe and it was badly infected. I told her I needed to clean it and try to dig the nail out from under the skin. She immediately re-hid the foot and said no. I walked to the computer and sent Doug a quick instant message saying that I wished he was home to hold her down so I could clean her foot. This is the child who had to be held down by three grown adults the last time she got a shot. Doug called on the phone and while he tried explaining to Sarah why she needed to cooperate, I IM’d my mother and she offered to come hold Sarah down. I happily accepted since at that point Sarah had thrown the phone down and locked herself in her bedroom. Apparently the conversation with Doug went poorly and he told her that she would end up at the hospital if she didn’t cooperate. He THOUGHT he was making an idle threat.
My mother arrived and we coaxed Sarah out of her room only to have my mother decide that the toe was too serious for our little intervention. The grandfather was called upon to babysit the other three children who were at this point (8:30 p.m.) all in bed. Sarah had major hysterics but we got her in the car and headed to Children’s hospital. At intake the nurse almost laughed in myface when I described the toe but upon learning that Sarah had a fever and seeing the toe in question, she ushered us back to a room. The doctor (he was just a student, really) came in and downplayed the whole thing, saying that we’d soak the toe and then clean it a bit. I assumed that we were going to be leaving soon with a referral to a podiatrist. I was wrong.
An older woman in scrubs dashed in the room, looked at the toe and left without saying a word. A few minutes later the doctor returned announcing that the surgeon had decided to remove the toenail. Sarah became hysterical. They gave her some liquid “cooperation medicine” but the pharmacy took so long sending up the anesthetic that Sarah’s goofiness had almost worn off by the time they actually started injecting the toe to numb it. She screamed and sobbed hysterically. Even after it was finished she was still sobbing and hyperventilating.
The hospital sent us on our way and despit a major detour due to a broken water main outside the hospital, we arrived home at almost 2 a.m. and Sarah eventually fell asleep in my bed.