We went to get Collin's haircut last night and right when we walked in the kids decided they had to go to the bathroom - off they went. A minute later I hear a blood curdling scream, the kind that you know something is really wrong. I go running and find that Ella has smashed her finger in the big, heavy bathroom door. She has sliced the finger right at the bottom of her fingernail and the whole bottom half of the fingernail is no longer attached and lifting up at a 45 degree angle. It looked pretty horrible. We put a band-aid on and she settled down a little. The poor little peanut waited through Collin's haircut. When we got home I took the band-aid off and the fingernail was no longer sticking up, but under her fingernail was getting really swollen. I decided to call the clinic and see if there would even be anything they could do. She said if I suspected the nail was no longer attached at the bottom I should bring her to the ER so they could repair it. So off we went. 4 hours later.....they decided to try and repair what they could. They gave her 3 GIANT shots of lidocaine right in the webbing part of her finger (they told me this would be the worst part - apparently they don't know how well Ella can scream!). It took 4 of us to hold her down/distract her while the pulled up her fingernail to repair, clean and drain out the nail bed. She screamed bloody murder the whole time - luckily it took less than 10 minutes. They were able to glue the cut instead of stitches underneath, then they pushed the nail back under the cuticle where it was suppose to be. So her fingernail is still there, for now, but it is only attached at the top part and basically floating around at the bottom. They said obviously her entire fingernail will fall off, but since it was still attached so nicely at the top they wanted to leave it on to provide some extra protection for the laceration. They put a little cast-like thing on and wrapped it all up. She also has a VERY small fracture at the tip of her finger. Once they were done they gave her a popsicle and a Dora movie to watch and she was good to go! She was out cold the minute we hit the car. She woke up a few times crying in the night, but seems to be doing pretty good this morning.
The Child Life Specialist helping Ella to clean and fix Curious George's finger to show her what was going to happen.
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