As usual, A was dancing around in our family room last night. Only this time, as she twirled, she tripped on a pillow on the floor and ended up falling into a shelf on the entertainment center—splitting her chin open.Half an hour later, we were at the local clinic—luckily for us they were still open. We paid our copay and waited for the doctor. Understandably, A was scared about what the doc might do to her. She said that it didn't hurt too much, but she was very scared of the unknown. I tried to explain to her that he was going to "patch her up with stitches." Not knowing what stitches were, I explained that it was "string."
When they told me what they needed to do, I decided to have Cheryl come over too. (Thank you Sandy for watching C for us) When Cheryl arrived, the nurse needed to give A a shot of Ketamine to eliminate the fight in her. She had a lot of fight just trying to give her that shot—it took two of us to hold her down. Within a minute or two, she was limp. The doc referred the effects of the drug as similar to Alice in Wonderland.
For the next hour, the doc cleaned out the wound, numbed her with local anesthesia and sewed her back together. Three subdermal dissolving stitches and ten surface stitches—they will be taken out next week. There is NO WAY she would have sat still enough for the doc to put in all those stitches. She mumbled a few phrases while she was out.
When A came back to consciousness, she described her experience as that she was a sleep and that it felt like "people were walking on [her]." The sedative is the same one used when the troops are injured in combat for emergency field medical operations. On the way home, she complained of some double vision and at about 9pm, she vomited. Shortly after that, she was a sleep. After 10pm, I carried her to bed and we changed her bandage.
It is scary to see your child in a state of unconsciousness caused by a drug. You hear too many stories of children given the wrong dosage and having major complications due to an overdose. You just hope and pray that these doctors know what they are doing and that everything will be alright. All you can do is comfort them while they are in such a helpless and vulnerable state—even though they themselves are not in the reality we are experiencing. I do have to praise A for her strength and bravery through all of this. She was a real tough girl.
