We had two club seats to the Panthers game on Sunday, Nov. 7th which we bid on in a silent auction at the Iredell Heart Ball this past February. We had the choice to pick any game that we desired in the 2010-11 season. We choose the Panthers/Saints because it was the only game that worked with our schedule.
I hired a first time babysitter, a girl from my neighborhood who I wanted to use but wanted Will to be a little older since she was sixteen. It's funny to think that sixteen is young to babysit when I was babysitting for neighbors when I was age twelve for one dollar an hour! The babysitter has plenty of experience because her older sister has two small children, one being a couple months older than Will. She babysits for her sister all the time.
We were at the tailgate about 15 mins when I got the call. Will had fallen and hit his ear on the corner of the sub-woofer speaker we had upstairs and it ripped his ear. Luckily, the babysitter's Mom is only a block away who rushed her to help with the situation while we drove home. We decided to look at his ear first before evaluating whether he needed stitches because Rick works in surgeries with stitches everyday. With one look, we knew he needed to go in. His ear was torn all the way through about 1/4 inch and then cut only on one side another 1/4 to 1/2 inch. Will only cried for 3 minutes.
After arriving at Huntersville Presbyterian, we were taken back and evaluated rather quickly. We choose this smaller hospital on purpose as long as they had a plastic surgeon on call (and they did). The plastic surgeon came in and said we needed to do surgery. Will had to go under anesthesia but he had eaten lunch approximately a half hour before this incident so now we needed to wait 8 hours for his stomach to be empty of food and liquid.
The hardest part of this was... the incident happened at nap time so he missed his nap. Now, he can't eat or drink for the rest of the day. AND the surgery was scheduled AFTER his normal bedtime, not including the "fall back" time change that just happened the night before. He was a little stir crazy at surgery time, 8pm.
We were released to go home for four hours while we waited. That was nice! Then we could pre-occupy Will with toys and going for a walk etc. I packed a bag thinking we were going to have to stay overnight.
The surgery took a half hour. They put in one internal stitch for torn cartilage and eight outside stitches. The surgeon was amazing. All the folks at the hospital and the surgical team were unbelievably nice, informative and wonderful. We had a great experience.
At 8:40, we were back in the recovery with Will where he downed three- 4 oz bottles of pedialyte and then we switched to water. He was SOOO thirsty. The poor thing.
And then believe it or not but we were driving home at 9:15pm!! I was like, WHAT?! Will fell asleep in the car on the way home and then went straight to bed. He slept all night and then ate like a horse the next morning by eating 10 mini pancakes, half of banana and 1/4 steamed apple cubes.
On a side note, I do not blame ANY of this on the babysitter. This could have happened to me, Rick or anybody. It was one of those freak incidents that happened and he hit his ear just right to tear it like that. I made the babysitter feel good about not blaming herself. I know what she must have been feeling like because I put myself in her situation.
I hope this is not one of our many trips to the ER!
And his ear looks amazing. The stitches were dis solvable and I can see as of today, they are gone. The scab fell off yesterday. We have a follow up on Monday morning.
Here is a picture of his ear, post surgery the next day.
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