Ella's big fall

On Thursday 4/22, I walked into Ella's school to pick her up and was immediately told that she had fallen outside, was bleeding pretty bad and that they were calling 911. I ran back to Ella's classroom where the director was sitting with her and holding a cloth to her forehead. She was crying and there was a lot of blood leading into the room and all over her head and neck. As much as I wanted to cry with her, I knew that I had to be tough for her sake. As soon as I moved the washcloth to see the cut, I called Papa to pick up Taylor because I knew it was definitely going to need stitches.

The ambulance came and took us to the hospital and got us in to a room right away. Though it was much too hectic to get the entire story of what happened while I was comforting Ella, turns out she was running outside and went to step up on the playground stairs. Her right foot got stuck underneath the stair and she banged her forehead on the edge of the next stair. One of the first things that the nurse did was put medicine directly into her cut. It is nice b/c there is not numbing shot or needle anymore, this goes right in and numbs it up. Ella was very brave and cringed for a few seconds, but she was mostly preoccupied watching cartoons on TV.

Oma and Opa were the first to meet me at the hospital since they were so close to the house and Papa had to take Taylor home and get her fed (she's a beast if she gets hungry...not sure where she gets that from :). Meena and Uncle Michael Kurtz were driving straight from work to our house to watch Taylor for us so that Papa could come up to the hospital and be with us.

Because it was quite a distance to fall head first, we got a cat scan to check for internal bleeding. The results of that came back just fine and the doctor that was taking care of us took a good look at her cut. It was very deep and because it wasn't on a derma line (or something that sounds like that anyhow), he did suggest we get the plastic surgeon that was on call to come stitch it up. The plastic surgeon had a few more office patients and didn't get to us until about 9 pm. Lucky for us the sequel to The Little Mermaid was on TV, so Ella was patient as can be.

When the plastic surgeon got there, he gave her a shot to numb it completely because it had been quite a while since she had the numbing gel put on and because the cut was do deep. Ella was still very brave and didn't even cry for that. He did about ten stitches on the inside and about 10 more on the outside. After he was done, he did tell us that bone was exposed and that he had to cut away some jagged skin. We were right next to Ella the entire time and held her head still and arms down, but we could really only sneak a few peeks once in a while because it was not a pretty sight.

We went back today for a one week check up and the doctor said that things look good. He said that it will most likely scar b/c it was so deep, but that it is healing well. The dermabond he put on is right over the dissolvable stitches. It's basically a super glue to keep the stitches/cut from being picked at or touched. It should start flaking off in about 3 more days, and we go back in 5 weeks for a quick follow up.