Over 7 Hours!!!

UGH!! Yes, you read that right....over 7 hours. That's how long we spent in the ER waiting to get Anna's chin fixed. They were going to do stitches, but after cutting off the fatty tissue sticking out, they ended up using DermaBond. So glad they chose to use that, as it was less traumatizing. Anyways, now for the rest of the story.

I got a frantic phone call at work at about 5:50pm.
"Where's Anna's medical card, I need to take her to the ER."
"It's at home, what happened?"
"Anna fell and cut her chin and she needs stitches."
"Come and get me right now, and I will get it."

So, he comes for me and I leave work early, because there was no way they were taking my little girl to the ER without her Mommy!!

When I get in the car, I have Anna explain to me what happened.
"I was pretend skating in the kitchen and I fell down."

LOL! Okay, so that was something typical. How many of us have slid across the floor? I used to love doing that as a kid and still occasionally do it as an adult.

Anyways, back to my story. We check in to the ER at 6:40pm. They eventually call her back to triage and check her chin. Yes, she needs at least one to two stitches, so our wait begins. (As a side note, it took them over 25 minutes after check-in to triage her...that by itself should be wrong.)

We were in for a long wait. Jeremy went to the car and got his IPOD so Anna could watch movies. We waited and waited and waited. Good grief. Did we wait.

We had Jeremy's mom bring us supper at about 8pm, because we were hungry and hadn't had supper yet. We ate that and waited some more.

At 11:30pm, after being there almost 5 hours, I went to check her status. Still in a wait and hold pattern. Good grief, its a good thing she wasn't gushing blood. (Oh wait, they had someone there doing that and they made him wait almost an hour for treatment. And yes, he got to go ahead of her. It looked to be gang related, so we tried to stay as far back and away from that as possible.)

Ok, back to my story. At 12:15am, I went and checked again, because after all, over 5 hours and only needing two stitches at most, you would think they would have had us out of there faster, but no, they didn't know when she would go back. So we sat and waited some more.

At 12:40, they called Anna back to triage to re-assess her. Good grief, I am glad she wasn't seriously hurt. Only took 6 hours to re-assess her. Yep, she still needed stitches and we could either wait, or take her to her primary care doctor first thing in the morning. WHAT!!! I didn't know that was an option 6 hours ago, are you kidding me. We opted to wait, since we had already been there over 6 hours and since it probably wouldn't be too much longer until we went back. Besides, that meant having to get up first thing in the morning and hoping her doctor could do stitches or DermaBond in the office, it wasn't a guaranteed thing. Good grief. If the triage nurse had given us that option at 6:40, when we checked in, we would have gone home and continued our saga today, but we were never told that option!

Anyhow, so we waited some more. At about 1:20am, we finally, YES, FINALLY, get called back to a room. Yes, she cut her chin open pretty badly, but they could glue it shut with the DermaBond. Okay, let's do it already, I am VERY tired and my body has physically had enough. He got everything he needed, cleaned up her chin and tried to push the fatty tissue back in to where it belonged. He would push in one piece and the other would pop out, so then he would push that one in and the other one would pop out. It wasn't working. He gave us two options at that point. He could cut off the fatty tissue so her chin could be glued shut, or we could do the stitches. I told him I didn't care, to do whatever he thought was best. So, he came back to the room with a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut off the fatty tissue sticking out of her skin, with no pain meds. OUCH!! Anna did really good. Once those pieces were off, he held the two side together and glued her chin shut. It took two layers to get it good and shut, then we had to wait about 3 for the glue to dry, and she was able to sit and wait some more. That's about the time she decided that it hurt. LOL!! They gave her some Motrin, which Anna said "tasted like bad oranges," covered it with a bandaid, to keep her fingers off it and released us to go home at 2:00am.

It was straight home and straight to bed for all of us. I am still in disbelief that we were there for over 7 hours. It took less than 20 minutes to fix her chin once we were back. The other 20 minutes back there was wait time. That is absolutely crazy. It might not have been so bad, but since so many people use the ER as a doctor, we were in line behind a bunch of people with the flu and coughs and colds. Most of them didn't truly need to be in the ER, but such is life.

Jeremy said we need to thank the Apple Corporation and maker of IPOD for having such a long lasting battery life. Anna watched 4 movies while we waited. Goodness sakes, she didn't say anything about the wait, until AFTER the third movie. It was very verbal though and very well said, as only a seven year old can say. "THIS IS TAKING FOREVER!!!" LOL!

Anyhow, I will try and post pictures later. I don't want to take the bandaid off yet, so we are waiting just a little longer. Thanks for reading about our wonderfully long day and pray that we NEVER have to do that again.

**Disclaimer: View Jeremy's blog for the rest of the story.