Yesterday baby Ray almost chopped off his toe with a shovel. It happened late in the evening while he was at a neighbors house. I was feeling sick and so I was lieing on the couch while Ray was outside with the kids. I heard baby Ray screaming, and not the "I'm not getting my way"scream, it was a true in pain scream. I look outside to find Ray carrying him and he yells for me to grab some paper towels. I wanted to demand an explanation but I did as I was told.

Baby Ray's foot was covered in blood. My first thought is always "don't panic", panic never helps anything, and you can't think clearly if you are panicked. Ray washed his foot off and the damage was assessed. It looked like most the toe nail was gone, but it didn't look like it needed stitches. It looked like we could just bandage it and that we just need to keep him from bumping it (yeah right!).

We took him inside and washed the foot and cleaned the wound as well as we could, put antiseptic on it and bandaged it up. We tucked him in bed with his foot elevated and thought all to be well.

I talked to the neighbor and told her all looked well. I even joked that we were to cheap to go the ER, which really is half true. We have a $75 co-pay for ER visits. I don't have that right now. But really if he needed it we would have taken him, it just looked like superficial cut.

This morning when he got up and I checked on him I noticed there was still bright red blood on the gauze. Hmmm? That is curious I thought. I attributed it to him walking around instead of propping his foot up thus causing it to bleed a bit again. While I was getting ready for the day I heard him let out a grunt and then he started crying. I go out into the hall and the blood is now escaping its fancy bandaging, so I call the doc.

They were able to get us in right away. Dr. Foote is our doctor. Such a great guy. Really he is just so calm. He said there was some concern over the fact that the injury was over 6 hours old. He injected litacane into the toe so that he could better see the wound. It was determined that the whole toe nail was gone and that to help the new toe nail grow properly he would put in four stitches to pull the wound together and up. Baby Ray was so brave and very co-operative.

I worried initially that the doc was going to reprimand me for not going to ER originally. Instead he told me that they might not have stitched it there, but that he was doing it to help the toe nail grow out even. He reassured me that I had done nothing wrong, we make the best judgements we can in the moment. Thanks doc!!

Now I just have to find things for my little guy to do for the next few days until the stitches are taken out. He is not allowed to do anything, but sit so that he does not re-injure the toe :) Wee Fun!!