Annie's Urgent Care Visit

So our perfect vacation did have a bad part. On our fourth day of the trip, we ended up in urgent care with little Annie! She was downstairs in the game room with another 2 year old and a 5 year old. Apparently, the other 2 year old clocked Annie with a billiard ball in the face just below her right eye.


Well of course she had a big goose egg on her face. As soon as I saw her, I could tell she needed stitches. It took a ridiculous amount of time to work with our insurance to determine where we could take her. (Matt's employer just changed providers this summer and I am NOT impressed. We had a horrible time getting information about where we could go.) But, finally after two hours, we got her 4 stitches. She was a champ through the whole ordeal. She hardly cried at all, even when it happened. And she didn't cry at all when they numbed her and gave her the stitches. I wasn't too surprised. She never cries when she gets shots either. What a warrior.


The nurses gave her a ton of stickers. They even gave her a fabric doll that she can color on with marker. She was treated like royalty, among all of the other injuries lined up for assistance - all surfers with head injuries, by the way (making our sea kayaking trip earlier that day seem incredibly reckless to me in retrospect.)


After it was all over, we told her that she could have whatever she wanted for dinner. She requested pepperoni pizza. So we stopped at a pizza joint on the way home. She devoured quite a few slices. She was starved. We finally got home after 9pm and she collapsed in bed.


Then we just turned our focus on treating the wound - cleaning it twice a day, changing the dressing, avoiding the sand (on a trip to the beach?!?) and scheduling the doctor's appointment to have the stitches removed. We go to the doctor tomorrow. I think everything looks fine and hopefully it will be a simple visit.


I'm just worried about her having a scar right under her eye. So I'm willing to hear anyone's advice about easing the appearance of her scar. I've heard about mederma and I think I will try that and vitamin E. And the doctor also told us to make sure we use sunscreen so she doesn't get skin discoloration. But any other suggestions are welcome!


The whole ordeal was a pretty emotional event for me. I was devastated that I wasn't around to prevent the accident in the first place. When the on call nurse asked me over the phone how hard she was hit, I couldn't answer because I wasn't in the room to know. That about broke my heart. As a parent, you feel so responsible for the welfare of your children. And it just breaks your heart to see them injured or hurt. This was our first big accident. I was teetering between trying to be tough and sensible as we attempted to get her care and trying to hold back tears and become a complete basket case.


Realistically, we were in the best circumstances for this kind of thing to happen. Because we were with the two other families, we were able to leave Leah and Ellie behind and both Matt and I were able to go with Annie. By the time, we got back, both Leah and Ellie were in bed. I couldn't have asked for a better situation. But still, I would give anything to have avoided it in the first place. I was trying to convince Annie to go with me to the grocery store before she got hit. She didn't want to go and I didn't push it. I had returned home maybe two minutes before she got hurt. Maybe if I had insisted that she come with me, she wouldn't have been in the game room and wouldn't have gotten hit. There's always so many coulda, woulda, shouldas. This one will stay with me. But what do you do?