Tanner strikes again...

Well, the day after Thanksgiving, Bryan was in bed with an upset stomach and I was in his office trying to pay the bills due before the end of the month. The familiar scream that Tanner has when he is bleeding, started right after I scheduled the last payment. He hiked up the stairs while he held left hand with his right. I was able to pry the hand open and found a clean, inch-long slice between his thumb and finger. I left a knife on the counter the night before, and Tanner took it apon himself to cut an apple with it. It appeared that there was more skin in that area than fat or muscle. There was surprisingly little blood. I did see underneath the top layer of skin and marveled at the purple muscle underneath. It looked like raw chicken. Totally cool! I put a gauze pad on it and Tanner held it in place while Bryan and I figured out which one of us would drive Tanner to Phoenix Children's Urgent Care. Bryan left not too long afterward and they arrived at the urgent care to find that it was closed. Bummer! Naturally, I was given the task to find another doctor. I called a doctors office near us only to find out that our insurance company wouldn't allow them to sew up lacerations. They said that we would have to go to an ER. Yeah right! I called our normal pediatrician's office, only to get an answering machine with a doctor on call. I called one other urgent care facility and found that they were open, that they did take our insurance and that they did sew lacerations. Whoo-hoo! Well, after all that trouble, Bryan drove by our regular pediatricians office and found it was open. The person that tended to Tanner told Bryan that he wouldn't stitch that area. He explained that it was a spot that had to move alot and that stitches would not help. He bandaged it up with gauze and tried to immobilize the thumb. Well, Tanner is Tanner and he found a way to wiggle his thumb real quick. We went to the store the next day and bought new gauze pads, wraps, antibiotic ointment and an ace bandage. With a little practice we've come up with a way to immobilize Tanner's thumb and give his other fingers some wiggle room. I made the gauze pad extra thick on top of the cut and wrapped the gauze around so that his thumb didn't have to be plastered to his finger. The ace bandage is wrapped on top of that, for further protection and immobility. In my brain, the other way we wrapped it probably just caused the skin to bunch up. Tanner would constantly complain that his fingers hurt. I think the skin is supposed to scab over so that new skin will grow back underneath it. I don't see any scabs yet. The undamaged flesh underneath looked a little red in spots, which might be an indication that the skin will pull some blood together to create a scab. It still looks like purple chicken meat underneath dead white flesh. To me, it's still totally cool to look at, but I'm afraid we are in for the long haul before it is healed.

His first laceration, on his head, left a tiny cresent scar on his scalp. The scab on his hand, from the garden clipper incident, has crusted over nicely and is ready be a jagged little scar. His new injury doesn't cause him a lot of pain. I'm sure it feels like part of his hand is missing, where the skin is dead. The doctor said that Tanner didn't cut through all the layers of skin, so the muscle underneath is just fine. Yeah!