Brian arrived on the scene having grabbed everything he could think of, he had no idea if we were still down the street in the ditch or what. By that time, my friends husband and I had gotten Jaxom cleaned up as best we could, had the bleeding slowed down, and had him settled on the couch and down to a low whimper.
Ok.. he was still crying but I didn’t tell you that.. ok?
Brian came in and took a look. There was some discussion about what to do with the boy. Take him to the hospital? Urgent care? Nothing.. it was probably just a broken nose..! What..?
I called the urgent care place and they were open. So we decided to take him there.
They cleaned him up and took a look, and as soon as he was able to see in there Brian knew we should probably have headed to the local childrens’ ER. He had two lacerations which made a nice little flap of the nose lining up there.
So off they sent us to the ER, figuring we might end up getting the boy stitches INSIDE his nose..
The drive to the ER nearly deserves it’s own post.. it was like all the crazy drivers in the state had a convention on the highway right in front of us. I was 100% certain there was going to be a multiply car pile up right in front of us at least 20 times during that ride..
At the ER, Jaxom adopted the line Brian had come up with as we waited at the Urgent Care..
“I was trying to get my woodpecker merit badge… and it didn’t go so well”
(Did I mention he rode his bike into a tree?? More accurately his nose was the only thing that hit the tree.. the bike is fine)
The ER docs looked, and thought. Sent in the ‘were here to take a survey’ non threatening CPS in disguise ‘research assistants’, and poked and prod again.
They came up with a very interesting method for stopping the bleeding.. nose spray.. yep… those allergy nose sprays work by constricting the blood vessels in the nose so they thought they would give it a try.
It worked like a charm.. his nose went from looking like Mohamed Ali ‘s after a big fight to Janet Jackson’s in less than 5 minutes flat.. insta-nose job!
And the bleeding mostly stopped.
A quick CAT scan revealed that he had a fracture in his nose and nothing else was broken and that indeed there is a brain in there.
After consulting with the ENT on call they decided that it was best to leave the lacerations to heal on their own, as long as the bleeding stayed in control.
So we got to go home, and drip nose spray in his nose every 3 hours overnight and check him hourly for bleeding.
Boy these ER people must think that parents won’t sleep after their kid gets hurt like this or something.
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