Uh, until about 6:00 pm, anyway.
In her yearly ritual, Tanya's mom Gloria (aka GG) picked up Ella and Sophia from school at noon and brought them to her house for what normally amounts to a fun afternoon and a sleepover.
For lunch they ate some of their favorites: hot dogs, grapes, chips, juice boxes, and some extra grandmother-sponsored treats thrown in as well. They played outside for a few hours and had steak for dinner. Then things went south. Literally.
While chasing a ball, Sophia fell and cut her head on some rocks. She didn't lose consciousness but suffered a pretty deep cut on the right side of her forehead. Gloria, a retired pediatric nurse and experienced mother and grandmother, called us right away. "Sophia's going to need stitches," she told Tanya calmly.
"Are you taking her to urgent care?" Tanya replied from her perch atop a barstool where we had been enjoying a date night.
"She's okay right now. But I think you better come down here as soon as you can."
We know our 7-year-old, and she loves her GG, but she needed her Mom and Dad. We bolted down to Gloria's house, about 20 minutes away.
In spite of her bloody head and various other minor cuts, it appeared that Sophia was calm. Almost too calm. We assumed she had already dispensed with most of the heavy crying that would logically accompany such a ghastly injury. Until she found out she'd need stitches.
At the hospital, the CT scan revealed that Sophia's brain and head were okay, in spite of the continued pain. The imaging test itself wasn't painful, and could almost have been considered fun—lying in a tube, head supported, under a pile of warm blankets and moving slowly up and down under blinking lights and beeps—but it didn't make up for the fear of someone threading a needle through her head before the night was over. Even if you're not seven, it's something to dread.
"I'm scared of the stitches," Sophia expressed many times through a new batch of tears. "I'm scared. It's going to hurt! I'm really scared!"
We assured her this was the only option and tried to help her through this awful experience the best we could. But even after tylenol with codeine, topical anesthetic and a couple of shots of local (imagine, if you will, someone shoving a needle into your head and telling you it will make you feel better), Sophia was still in agony. It was hard to watch.
Tanya and I empathized with our poor girl, as did the kindly Dr. Olsen and his assistant while they did their best to get Sophia stitched up and out of there. We cuddled her and tried to get her to breathe and reassured her, but quite honestly, it's hard to tell if it helped. Getting stitches simply isn't fun.
Nevertheless, I was amazed at Sophia's expressions of honesty and bravery throughout the process. Fear. Anxiety. Hatred. Lots of fear. She let it out for everyone to see, pouring through every fiber of her being. How many of us can truly say we are honest like that, ever?
"How many stitches are in there, like 40?" she yelled. She breathed as fast as if she had finished running a 100-meter sprint.
While Tanya hugged Sophia's lower half (and averted her gaze from the doctor's handiwork), I let Sophia squeeze my hands and hovered directly over her. "Fee, look at my eyes and breathe with me," I said.
"How is looking at you going to help? How many more stitches are there? You said it was almost over! I hate this place! I want to get out of here!"
"Me too," I said.
While he was stitching her up, Dr. Olsen said, "That's one smart kid you've got there. Most kids just scream and cry."
His assistant said, "I don't think I've ever heard kids her age talk like that during a procedure."
When we got in the car to go home, Tanya stroked Sophia's tired head and said, "I know it's not fun to get hurt. But if you have to go anywhere to get better, this hospital is a good place."
"Yeah," Sophia agreed, "It's a good place to come."
Then she fell asleep within a minute. After sleeping with Tanya in our bed that night, she had a bath and even helped Tanya out with the previously scheduled yard sale. We went on a hike on Monday. The tylenol's working fine and the stitches are healing nicely. But most of all, everyone is just happy to be home and finally enjoying summer vacation.
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| Sophia...almost smiling. |
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| Thanks for hair... |
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