It’s every parent’s worst nightmare – your child has had an accident, and you have to take him to the hospital.
We have a raised hearth at one end of our living room, and it’s tiled with slate. Slate happens to have very sharp edges … and when my son Aidan fell towards the hearth after tripping on his brother’s foot last night, bad things happened. Very bad.
Aidan hit the hearth with his head, just above his right eyebrow. I saw the whole thing happening, as did Teresa, my wife, and I reached him about 2 seconds after he hit. I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite that scared, because as I picked him up, I saw white bone at the bottom of a very serious cut in his forehead.
I carried him to the kitchen, laid him on the counter, and held a clean cloth to the wound while Teresa called 9-1-1. An ambulance came in about 4 minutes – we’re not far from the hospital. I rode with Aidan in the ambulance while Teresa drove behind with our two other children.
We spent about 90 minutes in the hospital; Aidan got stitched up; we came home. Very, very scary. Teresa snapped these pictures so we’d remember the accident.
In the hospital, on the gurney, with the standard you-might-need-it neck brace:
Aidan got sick of lying down with an uncomfortable neck brace:
The nasty, nasty gash itself, just as the doctor and nurse are preparing Aidan for stitches:
