Zoran's Stitches

My poor little Mr.Incredible, waiting to see the doctor.

Zoran had his first trip to the ER this week. Kind of horrible, but also pretty impressive that he’s made it almost six years without a visit there considering the speed he moves through the world. And really his injury was pretty minor, even if he is a little scarred up now.

He was running with his gang of superheroes (i.e. Lex and Dylan or Spiderman and Superman) when his leap from patio doors to deck wasn’t quite far enough and he hit the side of his face on the step. It sliced his lip and got a lot of blood all over, which caused quite a lot of excitement with all the other kids. As I washed it off and got him calmed down it was pretty clear he was going to need some stitches.

I wouldn’t let him look at it. I told him we didn’t have time. A few of the other kids there were already a bit queasy after seeing the gash up close. It was little, but sliced all the way through his lip and I was afraid when he saw he had a hole it might remind him how much it hurt.

I asked Mr.Incredible if he wanted to take off his incredible suit for the ride up to Ronan.

He didn’t. (Later he told me it was because he just wanted to go right away so he could get it fixed.) We got him some ice and into the car and by that point he was pretty calm and he just had a lot of questions.

Is it going to hurt?
Just a little till the give you medicine to numb it.

How much?
I pinched his leg (not nearly as hard as I thought the needle would be, but I was still trying not to scare him.)

I can feel it. Inside with my tongue.  It's ripped. This long *holding up an inch or so between his fingers * (which was pretty much exactly the same length as his gash). Yep, but we’ll get it fixed up.


How? How will the sides match up? Is it going to look all crooked?
Zoran would be the one bothered by a bit of asymmetry. I told him the doctors were pretty good at sewing things back together.


Do they ever have anyone with a split here before? Do you think they can handle it?
I told him about some of the different people I’d brought in with the ambulance and how I’d seen them sew up cheeks and eyebrows and heads and all sorts of things and that they were pretty good at sewing things back together.

We waited at the convenient care for quite a while. When we finally got in to see the doctors he told us Zoran had a “nice through & through” and suggested conscious sedation so he could fix up the “hamburgered” inside. But, he thought maybe the ER doc should do it so they sent us to that side. After some more waiting on the ER side, that doctor finally decided to just numb it up and sew him back together.

When the second doctor left to get supplies Zoran asked why he was seeing a different doctor.
“Is this one better at sewing up lips?” I just told him he must be, and that was sort of the impression both doctors had given us, too.







The multiple pokes to get the numbing meds in were obviously pretty painful. Zoran just sat on his hands and clenched his eyes closed and didn’t move at all.

It was pretty gruesome underneath when they lifted the flap to sew the inside back together first. At the time we thought he was lucky since most of the damage seemed to be inside. Since the mouth heals quickly, we thought no one would see even it if it scarred.

The coolest part of the repair process was when he went to rinse out/ spit out some of the numbing medicine that had leaked into his mouth. One- inch bloody bubbles started coming out of the hole in the side of his face. I wish I would have had my camera out then!

After 5-6 stitches he was all done.

He reminded me he didn’t cry at all.



Going back through the ER, a handful of nurses stocked him up with stickers, gooey eyeballs, plastic bugs, suckers, all sorts of treats. (We love St. Luke’s nurses!)
Azia took this photo of him sleeping to show her friends.


The next morning it was really swollen—he had huge, huge lips. That whole part of his face was puffy and for a couple days it just seemed to get worse instead of better.

We took a break from camping Thursday to go into town and got him an antibiotic because at that point it was starting to look a little red, too.




Yes now he is a tiger. He needed something to followup the the incredible suit at his next visit to the ER.

By Saturday morning the swelling was going down, but all the stitches seemed to be gone. His huge cut, however, was still there. We took him back to the ER to see if there was anything they could do at that point, but since it had started to heal, they said there wasn’t. Their only suggestion was that after it healed we could have what would probably be a good sized scar fixed by a plastic surgeon.



Zoran figuring out all the equipment. It wasn't reading on his thumb so he decided to try his toe like they had one of the other times.

Zoran was happy about this because it meant no more shots, stitches or exams...just the treat I promised him on the way home.

I was not-so-happy about it, because a week later it looks like he’s going to have a permanent split in his lip!
And we still have the ER bills to look forward to.