First Emergency!

Yep, John put his elbow right through it! Last night. It was very old glass, shattering and stabbing him just below the elbow. It punctured deeply, hitting the artery there. Thankfully however, the cut itself didn't look to be any longer than 1 cm, and he thinks it only took 1 stitch to put him back together. (He's not remembering so well the events of his past evening!)

So, that's the short story...want the longer version now?

John was in the entryway, turned, and his elbow jabbed into the window. According to him, he didn't think he hit it very hard at all, but it shattered and broke. At first, he didn't even realize he'd been hurt. I was in the living room, heard the crash, and came running. At first, John didn't know he was hurt, but before getting more than 2 words out of our mouths, John suddenly realized he was bleeding. For a moment I stood paralyzed, not sure how bad it was, but when he put his hand over his arm and blood started pumping out all over, adrenaline kicked in and I ran to get a towel for a tourniquet. Now, why - of all things - did I stand at the kitchen rack to pause a split moment and decide to grab a pink towel so the blood would wash out better later??? I couldn't believe my brain could actually be thinking of such mundane things like that at a time like this! Anyway, I whipped it around his arm and cinched it tight. It soaked right through the cloth immediately and for a moment I wondered if it was worse than I'd thought. Since he had on a turtleneck & sweater, I didn't get a chance to see the wound. But apparently, the tourniquet was just soaking up what was already soaked into his sleeves since it didn't start oozing anymore. When the adrenaline is pumping and you feel like you're flying around with your feet barely touching the floor and hardly seeing straight, it's rather amazing how you can do what needs done at the moment. Later, I was amazed that I got the tourniquet right where it needed to be since the wound wasn't very big at all, just deep & hit the artery.
We then worked to carefully exit the house with no one getting hurt again since there was glass everywhere and we had to get our shoes on there. Then, we started out - and I realized it's a whole lot different walking on foot to get to medical attention than in a car! You can't just step on it and get there any faster. At least the town's small; so about 7 minutes later, we got to the clinic John's been to before. We rushed inside, but they took one look and started shaking their heads. As I'd feared, the doctor there was not equipped to take care of it. They referred us to a hospital on the edge of town that I'd forgotten about, but had been to before(that's where I had that physical therapy I blogged about before.) So off we went again. John thought he knew a shortcut, so we took it...which led up a steep hill, back down again, and then I looked back and discovered that we could have just taken an alley with a fraction of the distance we'd just walked! Oh, well...I'd been keeping an eye on John's arm and since there was no more bleeding I figured if he was okay with the walking, then there was no harm done.
When we arrived at the hospital and walked up to the counter, a doctor came up and started to untie the tourniquet right there! I was shocked! What was he thinking?!? And what kind of a mess did they want in their front room? I had visions of blood spurting again. I think the receptionist saw my face, for she said something to the doctor who stopped and then motioned John on back to a room. I instructed the kids to wait in the lobby and then followed right behind. As it happened, there were no torrents of gushing blood when the tourniquet came off :) , but I'm still amazed at the utter lack of universal precautions here. I helped John remove his tops before the nurse with the scissors could get there first. Then, I was finally able to see the wound, which was deep but did not appear to be more than 1 cm. There was a hematoma next to the wound just shy of a ping-pong size. Since the wound was obviously deep, they wanted to take an X-ray. At that point, I went back to the lobby. When he came back out, he was already bandaged up and said they'd rubbed some local anesthesia on and given him 1 stitch. Then he got a shot in the hip - we think for pain control, and then was given a prescription for meds for the next 3 days. He's to go back in 10 days. I wasn't told why, so I'm guessing it's to take out the stitch?
So, that's the long version....my version, anyway! Whew! I'm glad it's over!

... Oh! And isn't it ironic that the pink towel got thrown away at the hospital anyway?!?