The 8 Stitch Cartwheel We'll Never Forget

So this week we are grateful that "it could have been worse." :)  The girls are constantly doing cartwheels and handstands in our apartment on the tile.  I would love to prohibit them indoors, but we don't have an "outdoors" to do them.  So they're allowed.  But Briant and I have had to remind them several times to make sure they look behind themselves before they do them so they don't hit someone or something.  And, as we've had the kitchen glass door hit a few times by cartwheels, I reminded them that they shouldn't do cartwheels next to or coming out of the kitchen.  Well, this wise counsel was forgotten, ;) and Savvy did a cartwheel as she was leaving the kitchen.  Briant happened to be right behind her, carrying a stoneware plate full of chicken (we had just gotten the plates a few weeks before to replace our plastic plates with BPA or other harmful chemicals :) ).  The plate cracked at the impact of her heel hitting it, and food, sauce, and stoneware went flying everywhere.  The plate shattered into a zillion pieces, and as soon as it hit the floor, so did Savvy grabbing her heal, screaming.  Thomas and Rhea joined in the crying when they saw all of the blood.  They were very concerned about her.  As kids, they assume when there is a lot of blood, that someone is going to die.  :)

(I had to grab these pics before we took her to the nurse.  These were taken after we had a grip on the situation and had cleaned up most of the blood, food, and dishes:)

The blood flowed quickly out of her, before we could even process what had just happened.  I ran and grabbed a cloth and the first aid kit while Briant put pressure on her cut.  We couldn't see the extent of the damage for a little bit because there was so much blood, but then we saw what looked like a serious laceration, too serious for bandaids.  Even in her pain, Savannah said, "It's all my fault.  I shouldn't have done that!" 

 We were afraid because we didn't know if the embassy nurse could handle her wound, and if not, where we would go to get good medical help.  We chose to start with Tracy, the embassy nurse.  We loaded Savvy up in our car and met her at the embassy.  I think she was as shocked as we were by the size the cut, but she kept her composure and witts about her despite all of Savannah's crying and screaming.  Not an easy task of course.  :)

She started out by washing the cut with sterile water, which started the screaming.  The open wound did not like the water.

After drying it, Tracy applied some durabond superglue to see if that would hold it instead of stitching it closed.  She had to squeeze it shut to see if the glue would hold, which only caused more pain to Savannah.  Seeing that the glue wouldn't hold, we decided to do stitches.  Tracy tried numbing the cut, poking it several times all over, which was one of the most awful things I've witnessed.  I usually have a strong stomach when it comes to things like this, but I had to turn away. It looked so painful and I could't blame her for screaming.  Briant was holding the leg with the cut, while I layed my chest over Savannah's back to help keep her from moving while I also held her other leg still.  

We tried to distract Savvy with a movie that she chose, but she was only able to watch about 30 seconds of it before the poking started up again and she couldn't be distracted from her pain.

Those pokes lasted a lot longer than we would have liked, but Tracy wanted to make sure it was all numb.  Unfortunately, the medicine didn't work.  AT ALL!  She started stitching her and she felt everything.  She stopped at 8 stitches, even though she would have liked to do about 12, but the pain was too much for Savannah.  She covered all of the stitched and non-stitched areas with steri strips in hopes that it would help everything come together and heal.  Needless to say, we were all grateful after the hour and a half of screaming and pain to be done.  

Here's Tracy, our wonderful nurse.  She was amazing.  Talking with Savannah, trying to distract her, and being so patient.  She sent Savvy home with a foot boot to protect her heel, along with crutches so she can stay off of her foot.  We were so grateful that we didn't have to find a hospital and deal with the long wait time there.  We also walked out of there very grateful that no ligaments were cut.  It could have been worse.

The next two days, Savvy stayed home from school, and got used to using the crutches and recover a little bit from the emotional trauma.  :)

 

She wanted to cuddle on the couch a lot with mom over her two days home.

First day back to school.  She was mentally and emotionally ready to go back and deal with not being able to participate in P.E. and swimming.  :)