Oh Andrew!

He thought it was so fun to be in the toy box.

And now for the "Oh Andrew!" pics.  Our boy took another tumble at daycare resulting in an ear injury.  His ear was SO swollen but Rachel had stopped the bleeding (don't ask me how!).

I put him in the tub to clean the dried blood off his ear.  Apparently I also got the clot off the wound and it would.not.stop.bleeding.

Carleen brought me out some gear to try to get the bleeding stopped.  Stupid platelets!  It just oozed and oozed for a good 3 hours before we gave up and took him to the ER. 

Of course I shouldn't fail to mention that I could not get ahold of Aaron because he was at a meeting at the church and doesn't answer his cell phone (grrrr).  So I loaded the boys up and took them to the church and then let Aaron decide what we should do with him.... he chose ER because we were pretty sure they could just DermaBond (glue) the wound.

So after the doctor DermaBonded the wound it was still! bleeding!  So I think the doc got a little nervous and started asking us about his bleeding disorder, etc.  He ended up calling the ER at Blank Children's Hospital in Des Moines for some advice.  WELL, they advised drawing platelets to see just how low they were and they also suggested a CT scan of the head since there was significant bruising behind the ear.  He was saying words like "skull fracture" and "internal bleeding".  Gulp.

We decided to "let" them draw platelets even though we know they are ridiculously low.  Soooo, after they stuck him twice fishing for a vein I said no more sticking and also declined the CT scan simply because there was NOTHING wrong with him other than a huge bump on his ear.  He was his usual self unless we touched his ear because that hurt!

The doctor was a little unsure of letting us go without a CT of the head but told us that he will let us decline because I am a health-care professional and he trusted my judgement.  Thank goodness because I have no idea how they would have pulled that off without sedating him and they can't sedate without an IV line and they couldn't even draw blood.... It would have been a nightmare!

So Andrew had a pressure dressing put on his ear and his head wrapped like a turban and we got home about 11:30pm Monday night.  Here he is having a snack when we got home.  He got to snuggle in bed with me so I could keep an eye on him.  He kept tapping his turban and saying "hat.... outside?"

The next morning we followed up with a nurse practitioner and she thought he looked great.  She did a thorough neuro exam and told us we only needed to follow up again if the swelling in the ear did not improve.  

Oh Andrew!