So I go to the gym to pick up my kids from the nursery, and I see the youngest one sleeping. There are two rooms for the kids, one for younger kids, one for the older ones. As I try to make my way into the room with A., the youngest, the employees tell me I need to go into the other room. I start to protest that I’ll just get A. first, and I hear my wife’s voice coming from the other room, where our oldest son is. She’s calling my name, semi-frantically.

I go in and see she’s holding R., and he has a big bandage on his forehead. She tells me, “We need to go to the h-o-s-p-i-t-a-l.” Oh boy, he’s 4 and we’ve never been to the emergency room! I can think of two distinct visits there by the time I was his age, and I have been wondering when this first trip would inevitably occur, and which son would be the first patient there. My money was on the other one, he’s much more reckless, but R. got to be first!

He was running around, fell, and hit his head on the edge of a bookshelf, creating a nice gash, but no trauma. The gash is right in the middle of his forehead, maybe a half inch above his eyebrows. He was very good during the emergency room visit. There was a TV in his room which kept him calm and fairly preoccupied for a while (he eventually got bored and was walking around and looking for stuff to do.) They used some numbing gel to numb the area before stitching it up, so he didn’t even need any shots. I got to watch everything from the cleaning to the suturing, it was pretty cool. It was a nasty little cut, but the doctor fixed it up nicely.

The whole trip took about 2 and a half hours, required five stitches, and will likely leave a lasting scar. Although the cut was very straight, not jagged like they are sometimes, it will certainly be noticeable for a while until it completely heals. They told us the discoloration on the scar could last up to 6 months or so, but that it should return to a normal color eventually.

There’s a very uneasy feeling of helplessness when your child is hurt. I made sure to “baby” him and do everything I could to keep him calm, but I kept wishing I could do more. My wife and I did not get excited, and that helped him stay relaxed about everything. I hated that there was nothing I could do for him, but I was very relieved that it was a mere “flesh wound” and not something more serious. I feel a little bit bad for him that he’s going to have this visible scar on his face for the rest of his life, but it is what it is. Maybe it will become almost unnoticeable eventually. It adds character or something I guess.

Boys will be boys!