Taken Your Child To The ER Room Lately?

Right before Thanksgiving, I found myself rushing my kindergartner to the ER after he bit the tip of his tongue in half!  Unbelievable, one minute he is playing in the living room and the next, he is running towards me with his tongue stuck out, with blood all over it!  You wouldn’t believe it unless you saw it.  His tongue was split in half in the front, looking like the spiked tongue of a snake.

My husband was still at work, so I threw the kids in the van and had my oldest call his dad and tell him that we were on our way to the local ER.  My heart was beating and I was concentrating on staying calm and getting him to the ER as soon as possible.  In the back seat, I can hear him say, “Mom, do the people in front of us know that we’re in a hurry?”  That broke my heart, I knew he was in pain and I couldn’t safely get us there any faster.  I asked him to please be quiet so he doesn’t have to move his tongue and he says, “Mom, will the police give you a speeding ticket if you go too fast?”  I can remember wondering how he could be so calm, holding a bloody washcloth and a tongue that has been bit in half in the front.  I figured that he must have still been in shock, because all I could think of was what experiences we were getting ready to encounter once we hit the ER.  Needles, stitches, who knows!

Once we got to the ER, the waiting room was full, but the hospital staff took my son straight to a room.  We were helped immediately and not made to wait.  The doctor told us that your tongue heals VERY quickly and by the end of the week it would be almost healed as long as we kept it clean  and rinsed it after he ate.  We were told to follow up with an ENT later in the week.  What an experience!  I was so grateful to the nice ER doctor and nurses that we met while we were there.  One of the nurses told me that she was a Travel Nurse from Florida.  She was single and enjoyed traveling to different towns while deciding where she would eventually settle down.  That sounded like a fun job, getting paid to experience different hospital environments and towns.

It has been over a month now and my son still has a slight “crease” that can be seen on his tongue.  Every time I hear him yell or fall down, you know what I am thinking!