Keeping Us In Stitches

Well, yesterday was a first for the Birchfield family. Our first set of stitches! Miss Kelsey B., age 9, is now the proud owner of 4 baby stitches right under her left eyebrow!

The story goes something like this: Kelsey had indoor softball practice yesterday, the first practice where pitchers were pitching to catchers. Until yesterday the girls were just pitching to their pitching coach. So practice was set for 4:00. At 5:07, my phone rings and I hear my husband's shaky voice telling me we have a "little problem". My heart fell because I knew just from the sound of his voice she was hurt.

He said Kelsey had taken a softball to the eye and he was going to take her (Joey was with them) to the emergency room because he thought she was going to need stitches. He kept assuring me she was fine, that they had "gotten the bleeding stopped," sounding like that was a great accomplishment, like he had reached the top of Mount Everest or something monumental like that. So I knew she must have been gushing pretty hard prior to the phone call.

I told him to take her to the new St. Mary's Hospital in Powell and I would meet him there. I was crying, frustrated and, of course, undressed. I had been working out (Yeah, I know. That in itself was a small miracle for the day) and I looked like I had been wrestling large animals in the back yard. So I flew to the bathroom, searching for something to wear. I really thought my yoga pants and shredded t-shirt, while painting me a free spirit, needed to be switched out to something a little more suitable.

As is always the case with emergencies, I couldn't find my jeans. I knew for a fact I had hung them up, put them in the proper place, all ready to go when I needed them. But I'll be darned if somebody hadn't come in, playing a cruel joke on me, and swiped them right off the hanger, hidden somewhere deep in the bowels of the house. So I, while screaming into the phone at my mother that SOMEBODY HAD TO WATCH SYDNEY, pulled out a pair of jeans from the dirty hamper and threw them on. I changed shirts, slapped on a little Dove deodorant, some tennis shoes and I was out the door. I pulled up at Mom's going about 180, threw Sydney into the driveway and said, "I'll call you later" and I was off.

I got to the E.R. about 5:30 and Kelsey was in triage with Joe. Joey was sitting in the lobby texting whoever it is he texts 417 times a day. Totally unphased by the events taking place around him, Joey had brought in his Rubik's cube and was pretty much obsessed with his growling stomach the whole time he was there. You gotta love teenagers!

So Kelsey comes strolling out, bread bag full of ice covering most of her face, looking like she had just come out of a war zone, dried blood decorating her shirt and pants. She took the bag off of her face and right above her very swollen left eye was an angry, bloody gash. The outside corner was swollen almost shut. The whites of her eyes were red and bloodshot. Underneath her eye was a little mouse with just the faintest outline of softball stitches.

We all sat down and waited about 45 minutes for her to be taken back. I sent Joe and Joey home to get Sydney and to eat dinner when they called us back. While we were back there, I asked the doctor if maybe we could use glue instead of stitches, but after evaluating her, he said stitches would be the only way to minimize scarring. So he prepared Kelsey for what was to come and went and got his supplies.

He came into the room with a BIG NEEDLE full of some kind of numbing medication. He sat down beside her, told her not to move at all and began poking her, pulling out the needle, poking in another spot, over and over again, probably about 6 times total. Kelsey was as still as she could be; the only clue to her nervousness was the shaking of her legs under the blanket. She did not make a sound. The doctor let her sit for about 10 minutes and then came back to stitch her up. About 5 minutes and 4 stitches later, with not a peep from the patient, we were done. He presented Kelsey with a big red double popsicle and you would have thought he'd given her a bag of money. She sucked it down in two seconds, grinning from ear to ear.

So we left the E.R., filled her pain prescription at the pharmacy and picked up something for our dinner at Mickey D's. Yeah, I know, so much for the workout earlier. But the child wanted chicken Mcnuggets and, by God, she was going to have them! We scooted home and Kelsey took a little bath, downed some Motrin and snuggled in bed. She insisted on going to school this morning -- Remember, she's my Type A, we-can't-miss-a-day-of-work child -- so she arose at 7:00, got dressed and headed off for another Monday at the co-op, never missing a beat.

So long story long, we survived it and have the bruises, the stitches and the pictures to prove it. The picture at the top is after we got home and Kelsey was snuggled in bed. The end of a very long day...