First Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!  We had dinner at our house this year, and things did not go quite as planned.  First, two fancy pie recipes went down the sink before I made a good old Libby's pie in a Marie Callendar's frozen crust.  Then the Fergs had to back out because the plague had descended upon their house and they didn't want to spread their germs to us.  And then we had to take Sarah to the hospital.

Can you spot the owie?

The poor little thing had a nasty hair tourniquet around her toes.  She had cried a lot at bedtime last night, but we thought it was just her reflux acting up.  So that means it had been on there quite a while before we noticed it this morning.  The hair was wrapped around her middle three toes and continued to wrap individually around the ring toe.  Matt was able to cut the hair and dig it out, much to Sarah's screaming displeasure, but the ring toe was so horribly swollen and the gouge was so deep that it was impossible to see if he'd gotten it all.  And since the swelling didn't go down after the unwrapping, we had to assume that he didn't.

We called the doctor, who paged the nurse, who paged another doctor, who told us to go to urgent care to get her taken care of.  We told him that the hair had actually cut through her skin on the bottom of the toe, and he warned us that they might have to make an incision in her skin to remove the hair.  I was just worried that she was going to lose her toe, but since it hadn't turned blue yet, she was still safe.  Matt's parents were good enough to come to our house early and watch Hayley while we took Sarah to Children's Hospital.

It was pretty desolate in the waiting room.  I wondered if we'd see any turker fryer casualties, but apparently the children of northern Colorado were safe this year.

The doctor called us fairly shortly and had a look at Sarah's toe.  She told us that we might have gotten the hair out after all.  Apparently the swelling will stay very tight for a day or two even after the hair is removed, and she couldn't see deep enough into the gouge to see if it was still there.  Now, I debated whether or not to include this picture because it creeps me out, but I feel an illustration is warranted.

Here it comes.

Nasty baby toe.

Looks really painful.

All right, here it is.

Sure looks like the hair's still on there, doesn't it?  Well, we couldn't tell for sure, so the doctor put a little blob of Nair on her toe to dissolve what might be left.  (Just on the top, since the bottom was cut open.  That would sting like a mofro.)  Then we sang and danced for her while the Nair sat for ten minutes.

"On a long and lonesome highwaaaay, east of Omaha..."

"My toe smells like a perm."

Then the doctor came back to inspect her toe with a probe, and oh my god, my poor little Sarah.  She screamed and screamed as loud as her little lungs would let her.  It was horrible.  And since the doctor still couldn't tell us if the hair was clear, she gave us the option of cutting her toe just to be on the safe side.  The idea being that if we cut through her skin, we'd also cut any hair left inside.  I asked if she'd be anaesthetized, and the doctor hesitated and said, "Well... it goes so fast..."  

Maybe I was still raw from the screaming, but I didn't want to do that to her on the slim chance it was necessary.  So we took her home with instructions to watch for any worsening over the next day, in which case we'd come back and get her sliced.  But now, eight hours later, her toe is already getting back to a normal color.  Whether it was Matt's work or the $50 dollop of emergency room Nair, the important thing is that she's keeping all ten toes.  Hooray!

And now, since Hayley wasn't featured in this story, here is a picture of her looking heart-meltingly adorable.