Carson’s Car Accident

Today was a day that I was going to get Mallory off the bus, run a ton of errands with just one kid, and then pick Carson up at 5:55p. But instead, I got a call from daycare at 3.32p that Carson fell on the playground and “split his eyelid open”. I said I’d be right there (without asking any questions).

Then I called my sister (who was shopping with NO KIDS) and asked what I should do.

Emily the clinician fired back: “Is it cut all the way through? Tell them to keep pressure on it.”

Sam the panicked mom responded: “I don’t know if it’s cut all the way through!” and called daycare back.

Daycare said that it wasn’t split cut all the way through and they had the bleeding under control, but that I’d have to come get him because he couldn’t/shouldn’t (?) really participate with a bleeding cut like that. They also said that he was being very brave and wasn’t crying anymore and was only mad that he couldn’t go back outside and play.

I called Emily back and she said it should be fine but if the bleeding wouldn’t stop with pressure that I should go straight to the ER. Oh, that’s reassuring.

Then Mallory’s bus that always arrives at 3.36p or even 3.35p didn’t arrive until 3.40p. I know that’s only like 4-5 minutes, but it’s a LOT of minutes when you are in a hurry to go give your baby boy a hug and kiss and make sure he’s OK.

Mallory & I raced to daycare and found this. OhMyGod.

Carson was happy and running around and telling me “I hurt my eye on car!”. Turns out he was chasing one of his teachers (pretending to be a dinosaur) and he fell and hit his eye on a toy car (which is why my dad said “Carson had a car accident” – silly Grampa! He’s so funny…but anyway)

So I was afraid that all that blood was a huge scrape. I sent the picture to Rick and my sister and my phone rang two seconds later. It was Emily.

Emily the clinician said “WOW.” I wrote that really big because to get a reaction like that from my sister who deals with blood and guts and stuff every day is unusual.

Sam the now more relaxed mom told her that Carson seemed to be fine and we’d see how he did later on.

A minute later Emily (again, the clinician) called again and told me to make sure Carson could look in all directions – so while I held his head still, his daycare teacher jumped around behind me so we could make sure Carson’s eyes both moved. Phew.

Here’s how it looked tonight after his bath. I had to fight him to clean the dried blood off and can now see he has a cut right along the fold of his eyelid. It is still bleeding a little bit and Emily said to put stuff on it to keep it moist. It doesn’t seem very puffy – so we’ll see how he looks in the morning.