Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Nixon's first big "OWIE"

On the 6th of January Conner and I were doing a late night house cleaning. Conner was heading to Arizona and Texas for awhile and Nixon and I were going to be staying in Nephi. Nixon had been wanting to help Conner vacuum all day but since Conner had to work we got a late start on things. It was around 9:30 when they started vacuuming. Conner had the vacuum running while sitting still on Nixon's floor and noticed it made a mark on the carpet. (it is a pretty powerful thing). So, when he was downstairs vacuuming he was trying to pull the cord farther down the stairs while the vacuum was still running, but he didn't want there to be a mark on the floor so he titled the vacuum up. (I was up in the shower this whole time). Anyways, I guess Conner saw Nixon reaching his hand towards underneath the vacuum and yelled at him to stop. However, it was too late. Nixon stuck his left hand under the vacuum and Conner turned the vacuum off within seconds and pulled his hand out. It is crazy to think that having his hand under the vacuum for only a very short time how much damage it did to his poor fingers! I heard Nixon scream and Conner panicking so I ran downstairs and saw his hand bleeding. I had NO idea what to do in that situation. I called my mom right away and Conner called his dad. (We obviously trust our parents more than ourselves!) We didn't want to go to the ER, so luckily Nixon's Grandpa Rick knew exactly what we needed to do (I guess his 'doctor' title serves him well ;) ) Conner headed off to the store to buy some bandages and medicine to put on it while I stayed home with the screaming child. (we did overdose him with Tylenol which did the trick until it wore off in the middle of the night!) We did our own little homemade wrap on his fingers and called it good for the night. It was a LONG night though I will say that!
Saturday morning Conner had to work, but Nixon was complaining a lot about his fingers and our stupid homemade bandages kept coming off. I took him into the instacare to get him checked out. The doctor reassured me that it was a good thing that I brought him in, his fingers were pretty ugly! They gave me the right medicine to put on it and dressed his hand in what Nixon called his 'glove'. The doctor told me to change the dressing everyday. That was by far the crappy part! By this time we were in Nephi, so I had my mom help me wrap his hand each night. It was HORRIBLE! He would scream bloody murder the entire time which would make me cry as well. It was pretty rough! Not only was that part bad but also his sleep was SO off. The first week in Nephi he would wake up at least every 40 minutes crying. It was a LONG first week!
One of the nights Nixon woke up with croup. This was his 4th time having croup so I knew right away what it was. I took him out on the porch around 5:30 in the morning as he just cried...and I did too. I was so mad that he had to go through his hand trauma and already have sleepless night let alone deal with croup! Oddly enough, the croup wasn't a problem after that at all. BUT I am kinda glad he got it because I took him in to the doctors that morning to get some medicine for it. If I wouldn't have taken him in then Dr. Taylor wouldn't have ever checked out his hand. Every time my mom and I would change his bandages his fingers would just drip blood EVERYWHERE! Because going to the doctor we were able to figure out why it was bleeding so much...every time we would take the gauze off that the doctor in Logan gave us, it would rip off the part of his finger that was trying to heal. So, if I would have kept using gauze it probably would taken A LOT longer to heal!  Doctor Taylor was so great with Nixon and helped so much. He wanted to see Nixon a couple of times after his first visit to check out how it was healing.

Nixon was in a club like bandage for the first couple of weeks, then Dr. Taylor took out two fingers so they could start getting motion, and left his ring finger and pinky wrapped up in the 'club'. A week after that we just moved to bandages on each finger. I took his bandages off a couple of days ago and his fingers are SO much better. They are still pink/red and you can tell they will probably scar but they look 100% better from the beginning! He still will not use his left hand and keeps it in a tight fist. I think he is just extra scared! I am so glad that his 'owie' was only as bad as it was because I know it could have been much worse! He was such a trooper and really LOVED showing off his owie to EVERYONE! It was definitely his way to draw attention! When everyone would ask what happened he would say, "I stuck my hand under vacuum" in such a sad voice! haha He got a lot of extra hugs and kisses from people in town and in my parents ward! He knows how to soak people for some lovin'! haha!


This picture was taken after it happened, it is kind of hard to see it all and tell how yucky it was...but it was the best we can do at the moment!






After the doctor visit in Logan...
1 1/2 weeks after accident.... (It got his pointer and ringer finger (both sides) the most, and his pinky a bit as well...it totally missed his middle finger besides a little scratch. crazy huh?!)




2 weeks after accident. He had just got back from his doc appointment taking his middle and pointer finger out of his 'glove'.



Changing his bandages...





I made the mistake of showing him all of the different colored of bandages we had. He designed exactly how he wanted one of the days. After that I learned to only keep one color out at a time! haha!
The remainder of the time he just had his two fingers in bandages....this is the best picture I got of that!




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