Dear Livia,
I should tell you about the terrible finger incident that happened earlier this year. It was a Friday afternoon in June. We were getting ready for Marshall’s fourth birthday party when we heard you scream. We went to investigate and Marshall informed us that he had hurt you. It seems that he had slammed a door on your finger. Imagine our dismay as we noted the drops of blood on the floor, the bloody hand prints on the wall, and then saw the wound your finger. It was split almost all the way around and the nail was barely hanging on. It was clearly beyond our ability to treat.
We did the only thing we could do. We taped a bandage around your finger, then stuck the two of you into the car and headed for the closest urgent care center. But when we got there they said, “Our X-ray technician left for the day, so you’ll have to take her to the next closest urgent care center.” At the second place, they said, “We don’t want to stitch a child that small. You should bring her to the pediatric urgent care center.” So we went to the pediatric center. The doctor there, who was the first to actually look at your finger, said, “This is beyond my abilities. You’ll have to take her to Hasbro in Providence.” Ugh.
So we took you to Providence, and what an experience that was. You screamed and fought during the X-ray process (oh, your poor dad!). Then they told us that they wanted to put you under. We didn’t want to do that, and fortunately, because we had fed you dinner on the way there, it was out of the question, at least for a few hours. So they gave you some sort of sedative up the nose. It calmed you down enough that you didn’t care what was going on around you. One of the child-care specialists gave you a video game to play (Marshall was so jealous!), and you were enthralled. You daddy held your arm, and I held one end of a sheet that kept you from seeing what they were doing with your finger. The stitching seemed to take hours. Maybe it did. It was close to 11:00 p.m. when we got home.
I’m amazed that your finger healed as quickly as it did. We had to replace your bandages several times per day, because you kept ripping them off. By the time we took you to get your stitches removed, you wouldn’t wear a bandage at all. The doctor said it was important to keep the nail bed moist, but you didn’t care. You just kept ripping the bandages off. You wouldn’t even put up with a Band-Aid. There was nothing we could do to change your mind. So, if one of your fingernails is sort of crooked, or lumpy, or otherwise weird, now you know why.
Love,
Mom