Gillian's Head Trauma

I know these pictures are a little overdue, but we just finally figured out how to download them from our phone.

Last June, Gillian pulled a dresser down on top of her. We rushed into the room upon hearing the screaming and when we finally got the dresser back up the first thing we noticed was all the blood. She had busted her forehead open to her skull. I got to be the calm one this time. Tim claims his panic was because he knew all the things that could go wrong when a 150 lb dresser falls on your two year old. Me, with the benefit of ignorance, just zeroed in on a problem that I could fix (the profuse bleeding) and tried to stop it. I just kept hearing Emily Bonnett's voice in my head saying, "Just keep applying pressure, it takes longer than you think for the bleeding to stop." I looked at the wound just long enough to ascertain that, yes, we needed help, and then I just applied pressure and emptied my mind of everything else.

Poor Tim kept running around trying to do neurological tests which wasn't easy given the screaming, kicking, thrashing child (at least we knew there were no broken bones) and a mom whose only thought was "stop the bleeding." Looking back, it was kind of funny.

I refused to let anyone take pictures of the wound itself, it was all I could do to look at it let alone preserve it for forever, but these are some of the after pictures.

They gave her a drug right before they took her into the CAT scan to help calm her down with the added benefit of being an amnesiac. So by the time she came back out, she was in a light sleep. This picture was before they stitched her up, but we had managed to stop the bleeding on the drive to the ER so apparently it is just fine to sit there with a gaping head wound.

As soon as the last stitch was in and the resident started packing up Gillian just got loopy. She was giggling and smiling and kept patting all of our foreheads. It was seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen and was such a relief after so much fear. She was an adorable little drugged girl

I was relieved that her eyelid was back to working properly after they got her muscle stitched back together. It was all droopy before and I was worried there might be permanent nerve damage (it was one of those things I was trying not to consciously think about on the drive to the ER), but once again, we got lucky.


I felt a little cheated when they sent us home with only this teeny tiny band-aid to represent all our trauma and heartache. I tried to convince them to wrap her head in gauze, like all the war wounded heroes in movies, but they thought I was joking. (Oh yes, this pictures also depicts the obligatory "McDonald's after any pain" McNuggets).

She looks mopey in this picture but actually she was a rocket when we got home. I swear she must not have remembered any of it because she was bouncing around and crashing into furniture all that evening. She made me so nervous it was hard for me not to yell at her and lock her in an empty room (we immediately took that dresser to the curb--bad dresser, bad).

A week later the stitches were removed. I thought the resident did an incredible job. We got lucky since we didn't know to ask for a plastic surgeon. Now, four months later you can barely see the scar thanks to the wonders of Vitamin E and a nice straight wound.