Carroll Conversations: Hailey's Toe

We had a fun adventure tonight. As if the evening wasn't already bursting at the seams with activity. I had picked up Hailey from gymnastics, Zach had just finished a basketball game, and we were hustling into the church building for his pack meeting when the front door to the church swung open right onto Hailey's big toe. These are big heavy metal doors. None of us noticed, Hailey didn't even flinch and in we went. Zachary went ahead of us and got seated. As we were walking down the hall Hailey said, "my toe kind of hurts, I bumped it on the door back there." We look down and her shoe was filled with blood. I assessed it a little further and determined that she possibly would need stitches as it sliced fairly deep and up under her toenail bed, but more than that, her toenail would need drained from the blood. So, leaving Zach at the pack meeting with a friend to watch him, I loaded everyone else back up. However, before I could take Hailey to urgent care, I had to drop Shaylin off at her basketball game so she wouldn't be late for her 8:00 game. By now it was 7:30 pm, so I called Jon and asked if he could leave work a little early (remember it's tax season, so yes 7:30 is early) and go get Shaylin from her game. If he left right then, he might make it by the end of Shaylin's game (remember the whole 1 hr 15 min. commute thing from Salem =). He left and I headed to urgent care.

When Hailey was finally seen the bleeding was under control and the skin had started to fuse back together, which was great. They called it a crushing injury, even though the entire weight of the door wasn't on her toe, because of the angle it treated it the same, which was why her toenail bed was filling with blood. They opted not to stitch since it was already beginning to fuse together, but they did cauterize the toenail and released the pressure. This girl is one tough cookie. She didn't shed a single tear from the moment this happened, all the way through the toenail being drained. That last part really hurts, I know from personal experience, but she didn't even flinch. They sent her home with fancy new footwear and orders to keep it elevated for 24 hours and off it for 48.