Snow days and memories

content warning: toddler has super gross accident, gets better

A year ago today I spent the day in the hospital with Chinook. I had a lovely day of sewing panned and then, while I was getting dressed, a scream. Kyle went down, and he screamed. He never screams. My baby had caught his finger in a fire door and the tip was hanging by a thread. I didn’t vomit. But it was close. Thankfully all the years of First Aid training I did as a lifeguard have stuck and I bandaged it up in place nicely. (The nurses at the hospital complimented me). We struggled to find a taxi, we don’t have a car, couldn’t wait for a bus and our neighbours were out. My phone kept dropping the call, but in the end we got there. By then of course, babies being resilient little things, he was feeling happy and playful, it didn’t look very urgent. We waited for hours before anyone even looked at us. The kindly nurse looked at the happy baby with the bandaged finger and his freaked out looking Mom and started removing the wrappings while making soothing sounds. Blood flooded out, Chinook screamed and screamed, the nurse’s eyes were like saucers. We got rolled to A&E in a desk chair, dripping blood along the floor. The surgeon was young, pretty, competent, but not hopeful. He’ll probably lose the tip. They wrapped it up again, we waited some more, in a private room this time, at least. The x-ray was done, it didn’t look too bad. The plastic surgeon was young, handsome, competent and a bit pushy. He got us into surgery that day. I think Chinook worked his charm – loudly playing with a car and running around, then watching intently as his finger was unwrapped again (it was finally bleeding less now). The bad news was, at this age they didn’t do local anaesthesia, he’d be going under. He was 20 months old. I was scared. We called his siblings and they wished him good luck, then we waited. I’m glad Kyle had remembered to stuff snacks in my bag. Chinook did not want to put on the gas mask, and he did not fall for the distractions. This did not help my state of mind. The surgeon was confident, she smiled – this was before masks all day everyday. I told her I sew and that this was not the kind of sewing I expected today. She laughed. I trusted these people. It would be fine. I am glad the nurse walked me back to our room though, I had no idea how we’d gotten to the operating room. It was probably the longest hour of my life. My brother, who is a nurse, texted back and forth with me for a bit. I was reading Little Women, it helped. I drank water. A nurse came to fetch me, “He’s waiting for you!”. And there he was, my beautiful baby boy, snuggling the beautiful, wonderful nurse. She laughed and said what a darling he was and he was mad when I picked him up. I don’t blame him. We ate some food, he had a nap, the nurses changed shift and our discharge papers got lost somewhere, so we waited some more. Somehow we managed to call a taxi, we got home and I told the driver about our day. He talked about his kids. We got home. We were so tired. Most of our plans for the next month had to be adapted to our convalescing, yet still super high energy toddler. We had several nurses come around to check on him. Kyle found and installed door guards to prevent this happening again. We registered with the GP, which it turns out is much easier than in Canada. He never got his 3 month call back appointment, because by then the pandemic was in full swing, but he’s barely got a scar left.

Today was a much better day. It snowed. Nice powdery snow for kicking up in the air and making snow angels and finding rabbit and squirrel tracks in. And apparently, 3 years ago, it was also snowing. So how’s this for a then and now?