We had a bit of a unique Christmas Eve evening….I was prepping my Grandma Jo's icebox cinnamon rolls for the morning and Armando's Thai shrimp soup was simmering on the stove and we even had candles to put on the table. I was determined to have a special Christmas Eve dinner like the ones my mom always used to make, and the squealing and screaming of my kids as they romped around the living area was barely registering when suddenly I heard a THUNK and an eery five-second silence before Anika's shrill screams filled the air. She doesn't usually cry, much less scream, unless she is screaming at her brother, so I knew something was wrong. Armando had stood up to intervene at just the moment Anika hurt herself, so he had seen what transpired -- during a game of tug-o-war, Reni let go and Anika fell backwards, hitting the back of her head exactly on the sharp edge of one of the wooden poles that separates our living and dining areas.
I held her in my arms and as the minutes passed and she didn't stop the screaming/crying, we knew something was amiss. I felt something wet and thought, poor thing is sweating, only to realize that she was gushing blood all over herself and me. Well, not so much gushing as dripping steadily, but at the time I felt like it was gushing. We tried to pull her matted, red-stained hair out of the way (Armando pulling the hair; me attempting unsuccessfully to not freak out) and saw a huge gash and a big lump right about in the middle of the back of her head. "That's gonna need stitches," my husband said calmly, as I tried not to faint. I threw a sweatshirt over my flour-doused, blood-spotted belly and wrapped Ani up in a towel. We grabbed Rosita and swept poor Anika, still crying and now alarmed at the sight of her own blood, into the car. It was, of course, incredibly foggy and some sort of rain/snow mix was falling heavily from the sky, so the 15-mile drive to the ER was pretty brutal. I kept asking her questions along the way to make sure she wouldn't pass out, in case that might happen. I had to carry her into the waiting room, nearly felling us both on the ice in the process, and at this point she had fallen eerily silent, save for a few sniffles here and there, but she nodded her head when I asked her if it hurt less than before and the blood dripping seemed to have slowed up.
(We left Armando and Reni at home -- Reni relentlessly peppering his dad with questions about Anika's head, and exhibiting that mix of fascination and horror with a sprinkle of schadenfreude that kids are so good at).
Bless this small town, as the ER was practically empty, and we got in a room right away. Some numbing cream, a game of Bubble Guppies on the iPad, and three large staples later, we were ready to go home. Anika was incredibly brave, barely registering a sniff (and a small cry of surprise at first) as each staple was inserted, and she mustered the courage to touch the device that delivered the staples after the fact. Two nurses came in as the doctor was cleaning up, and they looked surprised. "You're done already? We didn't hear a peep - we came in to help hold her down!" What took the longest was trying to remove all the blood from her hair, which a very kind nurse did with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, lots of gauze, and painstaking care. The doctor was wonderful - he has a 7 year-old girl of his own at home - and the staff brought her a stuffed monkey for her bravery. She was beaming with pride and smiles as we left to go home, and ate two grilled cheese sandwiches (at the sight of the cold soup, she said, simply, "ick") and drank lots of juice when we got home.
We are just glad it was nothing more serious and that she doesn't seem to have any sign of concussion, any pressure on her brain, or any signs of infection so far.
Anika couldn't fall asleep, as she chatted with me for hours in her bed about what the procedure was like, what the staples looked like and how they helped her head heal, what was the difference between staples and stitches and could I please draw her a picture in the morning of what it looked like? She finally fell asleep around 11 in our bed and I ended up eating very cold soup and wrapping presents until 1 a.m. Merry Christmas indeed.
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