Ingrid's First Trip to the ER

It's funny, ever since we moved here I've been thinking I should find out where the hospital is in case we ever needed to go.  I had a vague idea but couldn't tell you how to get there.  Thank god for mapquest, huh?

So today turned out to be a good day--no nap but she did get quiet for about an hour, reading books in bed with her glow worm.  We played outside with the dog, colored a lot, I got to sew some things, we got new squeaky shoes in the mail (more on those in another post...)  Then I went to go make dinner and it all went downhill pretty quickly!

I was making a horrible boxed meal because we haven't gotten groceries yet this week and Brendan had the car today.  So I had to open a can, the cat came up meowing pathetically so I gave her the lid to lick.  As I've done a thousand times.  Ingrid came into the room and I didn't really pay attention to what she was doing until she started whimpering.  Not crying, just a little whine.  Since she hadn't had a nap I, being the sensitive mom I am, told her to quit whining and go color.  Then I looked down and saw all the blood.

She had grabbed the lid of the can and sliced the top of her finger.  I tried to rinse it off and get a band aid, but man did that thing bleed!  As I said, Brendan had the car today, so I called him to see how close to home he was and he was still 20 minutes away.  I hate living here, have I mentioned??  We seem to be 20 minutes away from anything and everything...So Brendan came home, I showed him the finger, it was still bleeding profusely, so we took her to the ER.

Amazingly, she fell asleep in the car and slept on my shoulder all while we checked in.  And once she woke up she was really good, let the nurses look at her finger, they put on a VHS tape that had previews for things coming out "this 1992 holiday season," and then the doctor came in and said she could do stitches or just use some sort of steri-strip thing that holds the wound together.  Ingrid barely made a noise, she was so good!  And I was completely proud of myself for handling things well in an emergency.  Well, maybe it wasn't an emergency but it was a LOT of blood and when it's coming from your child, it seems a lot worse than it is.  And now we know where the hospital is--a 20 minute drive away!