At least Dermabond comes in designer colors...

Jillian had a visit to the Emergency Room yesterday. We haven't been home much over the past few weeks, so I was taking the opportunity to get some serious deep cleaning done. The kids were here and there around the house all day, since it was 95 degrees outside and way too hot to play outdoors. I was in the kitchen around 3:00 or so, and heard a huge crash followed by hysterical screaming. Now, Jillian being Jillian, I often hear crashes followed by hysterical screaming, but this time there was notes of pain and panic in her voice that had me drop what I was doing immediately and go running.

She was in the den, picking herself up off the floor near the standing fan, her glasses were knocked askew and she had blood - lots and lots of blood - running down the right side of her glasses and her face. My first horrified thought was that she fell, the glass in her glasses broke and punctured her face and eye.

It's funny - I always thought I'd be completely useless in a situation like that - I figured that I'd either start freaking out, further scaring the crap out of my child, or that I'd doing something stupid like throw up. But I actually surprised myself - I went into some sort of auto-pilot mode. I carefully removed her glasses, saw that the gash was above her eyebrow - about a half inch in length, very deep, and looked like it was caused by the frame of her glasses slamming into her face when she fell. I brought her in the bathroom, grabbed a hand towel and put pressure to her head and yelled to Matt to get the phone for me. I knew that Mark was supposed to be in Sudbury at a meeting, so I called his Mom, who is the closest person to us in vicinity. I told her that Jill needed stitches and that I didn't know if I could get her to the ER myself because of all the blood, so she said she'd be right there to help (thank God for my mother in law, I swear).

My next call was to Mark to tell him to come home as soon as possible, and was surprised to learn that he was nearly in Tewksbury and would be able to meet us at the hospital. He arrived shortly after we did, and we made the decision that he'd take Matt home and his Mom would stay with Jill and I.

So... long story short, like I said, thank God that Mom was able to be there, because she used to volunteer at the hospital and still knew a lot of the staff. She ended up staying with us the entire time. That made a huge difference all around. What could have been a really long night at the hospital waiting to be seen turned into a really positive experience in which we were in and out of there in about two hours and were seen by an amazing doctor that treated Jill with sensitivity and gentleness that left Mom and I raving. He got down to her level, looked her in the eye when he talked to her, whispered in her ear and made her giggle and feel more comfortable, explained everything he was going to do before he did it... I can't sing his praises enough.

He told us that since the gash was a clean, straight cut, he felt sure that Dermabond (a medical-grade super glue) was a good fit. There was no novacain shot (they use a liquid now), no holding her down or swaddling her, she didn't cry or squirm or complain of pain... in other words, all of my fears on the drive over to the hospital were unfounded.

The Dermabond should wear off in about a week to a week and a half, and while she will have a scar, the doctor assured us that by the time she's a teenager, the scar should be faint enough that it'll be virtually undetectable.

Anyway, Another milestone of childhood (and parenthood, for that matter) has passed. And Jillian was thrilled that the Dermabond came in purple. Because she loooooves purple!