Chapter Three: Day of the Disaster!

The day started out like any other day. A dip in the pool, a lounge in the hot tub, and heading off to Sea World. And at Sea World we were just getting into the groove. We headed over to the sea lions and seals and learned all about the differences in the animals and about their habitats and then we decided to feed them. So Mitchell threw in a couple of fish and Jane held out her hand to feed a sea lion when disaster struck. A seagull flew in and snatched that fish right out of her hand! Ouch! That gull bit her. It might have been more shocking than it was painful but her finger was bleeding nonetheless so we had her patched up with a band-aid and headed off sure that was to be the worst accident of the day.


Were we ever wrong about that.

Luke was a little tired from late nights and walking the entire day at the zoo the previous day and since he never stops bouncing I guess I should have been prepared for some sort of mishap. But I wasn't and we headed off to see the sharks. No, he didn't fall into a shark tank. In fact, we had a great time seeing the sharks but the meltdown started as we left the shark cave and we knew it was time for a treat. So we sat down in a quiet area to look out over the ocean inlet and drink our smoothies. And then Luke fell. He slipped off a bench and hit his mouth on the concrete table before falling back and hitting his head on the ground. And the blood started pouring from his mouth. I thought at first he might be hemorrhaging but I realized he was screaming too hard for that. So I picked him up and we sped off to find the nearest first aid station which wasn't very close particularly when park workers kept leading us slightly astray. But we finally made it with many scathing looks along the way. Yes, people, go ahead and think it, I'm abusing my kid in front of hundreds of others. That's really smart. At any rate, the mostly untrained EMT was a little over his head with anything other than a blister so he sent us to the children's hospital and with his fabulous directions we only took about five wrong turns before we ended up at a hospital, but not the children's hospital which the triage nurse was sure to tell us was quite close because some parents don't want their children in an adult hospital but we were free to choose. So we choose to stay. And I think quite wisely because they took us back within a couple of minutes probably because they, as well as the other patients waiting, were very worried about this small child screaming bloody murder. And other than the fact that they didn't really have equipment for small children and that they had to call the children's hospital to make sure they were right on the medication dosage, they did a great job.

What happened was this: when Luke fell his teeth cut almost completely through the inside of his lip and he severed an artery in his mouth in the process. As a result he needed to be stitched up, which also meant they had to knock him out, or rather they gave him a dissociative medication which essentially was like watching Mitchell have one of his complex partial seizures. It was awful and he didn't really recover the full use of his body for the rest of the day. But he was stitched up nicely and he cooperated with eating soft foods for about twelve hours and other than the entire right side of his face being swollen and painful he was remarkably normal the following day.

And with that we made it through another great vacation day!

Luke the day after the accident, swollen but smiling.