If you can't stand the thought of blood or bleeding. Don't read this post. The rest of the blog is safe, but this post contains a tale of woe... and blood. Woe and Blood. You've been warned.
Have you ever seen the aftermath of a badger attack? Technically, I haven't, but I feel kinda like I have. There is blood all over my apartment, all over my wife, all over me. I look like I survived (another) bombing. I don't really feel like I did though.
It started at almost 10 pm last night while I was getting Jack ready for bed. I was trimming his nails and because he is a 4 month old, because he had no idea that I could hurt him and because I said so his finger moved at just the wrong second, I cut the tip of his finger with the clippers. He cried for a few minutes, and started bleeding. The crying subsided, but the bleeding continued and continued and just kept right on continuing. I tried to get it to stop. It wouldn't. I asked Jack to stop bleeding. He didn't. I offered the finger and Jack money. They were unfazed.
When faced with continuous uncontrolled bleeding, you have a three step fix before you start looking to put pressure on arteries. Direct pressure to the wound. Raise the wound above the level of the heart. Pressure dress the wound. I did all three and I wasn't about to put pressure on his artery. Not for a nick on his finger tip... but that nick was still bleeding.
At 2am (yes) I woke Jenn up. I needed help with Jack, we needed to go to the ER. I hate that I even had to consider going to the ER for a cut on a finger tip, but realistically I was going to the ER because my son wasn't clotting off what should have been a minor wound, one that had it happened during play could even have gone unnoticed without a close inspection.
Jenn and I got dressed. We washed as much blood off of Jack as we could, and then ourselves By the time that we got to the ER (>1Mile) Jack was covered in blood again. But somehow, and this is a mystery that is usually isolated to car mechanics, he had almost completely stopped bleeding. Jenn asked if I thought that he was finished. I couldn't see any reason why he would start bleeding again now that the bleeding had almost stopped, so we left.
Jack, as you probably have already guessed started bleeding again and I spent the night on the floor with him. He slept atop a pile of towels, a white one on top so I would see if he started to bleed more profusely and I layed on a sarapé and read a few chapters from this book. We got a couple of hours of restless and interrupted sleep and were up early in the morning. With Jack still bleeding, we made a call to the pediatrician to get him in as quick as he could be seen, got dressed and headed out the door.
At the pediatricians office we played with Jack, who, apart the five minutes when I flayed him, had been as happy and playful as can be, no mean feat for someone who had been bleeding for a dozen hours. He flirted with nurses and we talked to the doctor about how to stop the bleeding, and if this was normal. There was a Hematology consult and a follow-up is to be scheduled.
We had been in the pediatricians office for several hours by this point and Jack was finally starting to get cranky. He was writhing around, trying to get comfortable, and by that I mean "get on the floor so he can scoot away" and as quickly as it started, it stopped. Wouldn't you know it? Just as they were getting ready to send us off to the ER again, the bleeding stopped. Thank goodness. It had been flowing for over 15 hours. How do you bleed for that long and not die? I've bled alot, but I don't think that I've bled for 15 hours all together.
We are back at home. Everyone is taking naps and I am just happy that it is all over. I'm so tired I'm delerious.
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