A water slide and a sore toe

That title sums up last Sunday afternoon--and be forewarned there's a slightly graphic photo at the end of this post!

I was on call this past weekend, so I went to the hospital to round after church and John took the kids to Walmart for a battery for the smoke detector--and came home with an inflatable water slide.  After a few hours (!) of inflation (moral of this story: buy a plug-in air pump), the kids were ready for some fun:

Little sister had to do the same thing:

What's particularly impressive is that Will was having all that fun with a toe that looked like this:

He was moving one of the dining room chairs and it landed on his big toe.  He started screaming--John thought he was frustrated but I recognized it as a "severe pain" scream and ran over, and sure enough his little toenail was filling with blood.  I really, really hate any injuries to toenails, fingernails, or teeth (I know, I have to steel myself anytime I see that chief complaint on a chart) so between his screams of pain and that toe I got a queasy feeling I haven't experienced since my 3rd year OB/Gyn rotation in medical school when I watched a forceps delivery that caused a fourth-degree tear, and that poor mom's epidural didn't work and the local anesthetic didn't seem very effective.  The resident asked me if I'd like to help sew it up, and I replied that I'd prefer to go sit in a corner and put my head between my knees.

Anyway, once my stomach settled, I told Will that I could make his toe feel better if he'd let me stick a needle in it to let the blood out.  Will stopped crying and looked at me in total shock.

"A needle????  In my toe??? No, mommy, I think that would be very, very bad!!!"

Opting out of a trephination, he laid in my lap for about 30 minutes until he heard Anna splashing in the pool outside, at which point he mustered the strength to hobble outside.  He did fine for the rest of the day and played just fine at school the next day, but the toe became more red and swollen yesterday.  I think it was probably due to all of his activity, but we recently had a patient get a bone infection from an injury similar to this, so I took him to the office for another opinion.  He was really apprehensive about that, and kept saying "I don't want a needle in my toe!!" which probably freaked out a few kids as we walked through the waiting room.

Anyway, he had an Xray to see if he'd fractured the tip of his toe (he didn't) and is on some antibiotics due to the redness.  I'm praying that the only sequelae from this is the loss of his toenail!