Fingers

Saturday, December 6th, Scott and I headed out on our weekly date night (dinner and grocery shopping).  We left Savannah in charge, like we always do.  We met up with Glen and Kendi for dinner at Zupas (my new favorite restaurant).  Then we went on to Walmart to do our grocery shopping.  While we were in the check out line, Scott's phone rang.  Scott's face immediately went white, and I knew something was wrong.  He got off the phone and said, "Josh's exact words were 'Owen just shredded his fingers in the treadmill'".  I didn't know what to think.  We were 20 minutes from home, so there was nothing that we personally could do to help him.  Scott immediately called a neighbor who is a doctor, and asked him to go to our house and assess the situation.  Then Scott called back to our house to tell the kids that Brother (Rob) Jackson was coming to help.  Savannah answered the phone and said, "I told Josh not to call.  It's not even that bad.  It's barely scraped, and it's not even bleeding."  Once again, Scott got off the phone, and we didn't know what to think.  We didn't know who to believe, Josh or Savannah.  So we finished checking out with our groceries, and headed out to the truck. 

As we finished loading the groceries into the truck, Rob called to let us know what was going on.  He said, "It's bad.  I think he has 3rd degree burns.  I suggest you take him to the ER.  I can load him up and meet you there, if you would like".  Scott hesitated, thinking about how much the ER would cost us, but I immediately said, "Yes!  We'll meet you there!".  We arrived at the ER and waited till Rob got there with Owen and Josh (he figured Owen would do better if he had Josh along with him).  Rob carried him in to me, then handed him over, with a run down of what to tell the ER doctor.  I thanked Rob profusely, then carried Owen back to meet with the ER doctor. 

The nurse got as much information from us as she could (most of the info had to come from Josh, because we hadn't been there to know what had happened).  Apparently, Savannah was letting Owen walk on the treadmill, and Owen got curious about where the belt went when it disappeared over the end.  He grabbed on to try and look underneath, and it sucked his fingers in and trapped them.  The belt then just worked like a big belt sander, wearing down his fingers and burning them. 

The doctor came, and needed to look at Owen's fingers.  Rob had put bandaids on them at our house, so even I hadn't seen the fingers yet.  The doctor suggested I take the bandaids off, since Owen would feel safer with mom doing it.  I unwrapped the first finger, and cringed and looked away and said, "Yeah, that's bad."  The doctor said, "Wrong reaction, mom.  You have to smile and say it's not that bad."  So I took off the next bandaid, and smiled down at my scared little boy and assured him it wasn't very bad. 

The doctor examined them, and agreed that we were dealing with 3rd degree burns.  He started telling us what to expect for the healing process.  All of a sudden, we heard snoring.  We looked over to see Owen sound asleep.  The doctor gave us a referral for a hand specialist, and then the nurse went to work bandaging Owen's hand.  Owen slept right through it all.  What a blessing that was!  They had talked about doing a "conscious sedation", where they give him a shot that knocks him out without actually putting him to sleep.  They said, "his eyes are open for it, but he's really not there."  But with that, we would have had to be there for hours of sedation monitoring.  It would have made for a really long night.  So the fact that Owen chose to go for the natural sedation of sleep, made it a lot easier on all of us. 

 

He slept clear through it all, until Scott picked him up to carry him home.

Of course, after we got home, all the kids were very concerned and wanted to help take care of Owen.  Sara brought him her pillow to rest his hand on.  Savannah took it the hardest.  She said she really hadn't thought it was that bad, because it hadn't been bleeding, and that if she had known it was as bad as it was, she would have called us.  It had burned through so many layers of skin, that it was just white and it wasn't bleeding.  We told her it was ok, that she isn't old enough to assess medical emergencies.

After Owen's power nap in the ER, he was wide awake.  I think his body went into shock and released a bunch of adrenalin, because he was pale as a ghost, but couldn't go to sleep.  He was up till 2:30am!  Finally, he fell asleep.  The next morning was going to be 9:00 church.  I decided (as I was getting to bed at 2:30), that I would plan on missing church and letting him sleep in.  I didn't know how much pain he'd be in the next morning, and I knew his body would need sleep to heal, so I wanted to let him sleep as much as possible.