Toe Tourniquet and What TO-DO | Our Trip to the E.R.

WARNING: there are some mildly gruesome pictures in this post. 

Talk about a crazy last couple of days! It all started out hunky-dory until… it wasn’t. Have you ever seen in the movies with babies and the scene comes up with the parent having a great bonding moment between them and the baby, then suddenly it projectile vomits all over them? Those moments are real. I lived that moment and I think I handled it pretty decently. I mean…I was in public. Do I get extra points for that? We were enjoying Michaels first trip to the zoo and he seemed to be having a great time. There was a cool little black bear interactive show we were waiting to watch and only had a few minutes left. Imagine this, I am holding Michael on my hip squishing his cheeks. All of a sudden, literally out of a movie scene, Michael PROJECTILE VOMITS ALL OVER ME. We are not talking about a little spit up, like a TON of throw up. It goes everywhere. It gets on the bench behind me, the sidewalk, all over himself, me and probably the little boy who was gazing cutely at Michael (sorry to that mom) who ran away so fast after it happened. Luckily the show was just starting, and everyone was gone to watch it from my area so I could get us both cleaned up. My mom instincts had gone off before we left, and something told me to double-check the diaper bag and make sure I had packed it perfectly. So everything I needed for the both of us was in there to get changed, cleaned and good as new-ish. Well the fun exciting trip to the zoo was over after we watched the end of the bear show.

I may have had more fun at the zoo than Michael and I remember walking around the cool park it was in thinking how much fun it is to be a mom and how blessed Kevin and I are with such an amazing little man. We get back home, and I attempt to feed Michael who worked up an appetite sleeping the whole way home, but refused to eat his solids (which is not normal at all). I give up on that and go to nurse him instead and he accepts it then passes out almost immediately. Something was up. He wakes up about 30 minutes later and throws up a ton all over me again. I tell Kevin to pick up some Pedialyte on the way home and said hurry up so I could call the on call doctor to verify it was safe for him to take and the quantity to give. He clearly caught the stomach bug both Kevin and myself just got over. Somehow after the phone call ended and Michael throwing up yet again he managed to get a toe tourniquet. What the heck is that?! My first thoughts exactly when I found out the medical term for it. I text Kevin shortly after I called him and told him there was something caught on his toe cutting the circulation off and he needed to get home asap. As soon as Kevin was home I called the doctor originally about the stomach bug, but the conversation quickly changed when I informed her about his little toe. She said we needed to get him to the child’s ER asap and get it taken care of.

We try a few more times to get this hair that is wrapped around his toe off, but it is too tight, and we jump in the car and head to the child’s hospital. This was around 7 p.m. The doctor warned us the ER was very busy and she was right. When we arrived the waiting room was crazy packed. I am the third person in line to check in and finally when I get to the check-in nurse she immediately asked to see his foot. We are taken back immediately and doctors come in to evaluate the situation. Kevin and I are trying to remain calm, but Michael’s toe is starting to get even more red. It had already been 2 hours since I first saw it. We are seen by a handful of various types of nurses and doctors before any action starts.

Finally! Let’s get the hair off his toe! They go in with some tweezers attempting to do exactly what Kevin and I were doing at home (but they are professional so they know what they’re doing). It doesn’t work. The hair was wrapped too tightly around his toe to get off and was too swollen to see it clearly.  Next attempt. They have someone go to the CVS across the street to buy some Nair hair removal. This also doesn’t work but did effectively aggravate Michael even more. By this time it was probably around 9:30 pm and no progress has been made. The doctors come back in and say our last option is to sedate Michael, numb his toe and make a small incision to cut down deep enough to break the hair. We had no idea our night was going to turn into what it had. 10:30 rolls around and the procedure begins. Thank goodness Kevin was strong for the both of us because it was the hardest thing watching him get drugged and a scalpel go to his toe. As a mom, every possible worse case scenario is blazing th

rough my mind. Oh my gosh what if Michael moves and he cuts a chunk of his toe off? What if they go too deep and damage his bone? What if’s were flowing through my brain and I couldn’t stop them. AH! DON’T HURT MY BABY! Lol.

We have 5 different people helping or gazing down at what is happening. Kevin is distracting and holding down the top half of Michael who is in a great drugged up mood. The first doctor we spoke with holding down a leg, myself holding the other leg down, another doctor holding a very high-end medical surgery approved light from his cellphone (roll eyes here), and another nurse running to get supplies. We are all looking and making our opinions on whether the hair was released or not. He definitely cut deep enough to get the hair but he wasn’t confident it was completely removed. After telling us how he felt he suggested us to wait for a second opinion from the plastic surgeon who was coming in for another patient in 2 hours. Of course we said yes and our minds were eased by 50%. I was watching the procedure and we all thought the same thing. It looked as though the hair was released but none of us actually saw a hair come up. At 2am the plastic surgeon shows up and evaluates Michael’s toe. He confirms there is blood flowing in the toe which is a good sign and color isn’t as red as it was going in early that night, all good signs. He was concerned though that the hair wasn’t taken out of the toe and he gave us 2 options as well. One, take him home and watch closely at the color in case the hair wasn’t completely removed causing permanent damage. If it starts to turn white or dark red/purple, to call him immediately to set an appointment to have Michael put under and him to cut deeper to guarantee the hair be removed. Second, have him put Michael under now and make sure it was all out. Obviously I wasn’t doing anything else to my poor baby after his long and pretty traumatizing day. Poor little guy catches a stomach bug, can’t eat anything without puking everywhere and ends up in the ER for getting a hair wrapped around his toe so tight it is cutting off the circulation to it. BTW a toe tourniquet is a device for stopping the flow of blood through a vein or artery by compressing a limb with a cord or tight bandage. So we finally get discharged at 3am and get back safely home, toe in place and Pedialyte filled baby asleep.

What a crazy series of events right?! You never know what is going to happen with kids. Anything can literally happen! What started out as a fun, exciting day quickly took a turn for a bizarre, scary adventure. With something as simple as a piece of hair getting caught on a toe. If you are ever to find yourself in this type of situation there are a few ways to approach it. You can try to take it off yourself with tweezers or nail and cuticle appliances. You could run to the store and pick up some Nair and try to dissolve the hair. Then if both of those things don’t work I would suggest going to a children’s ER immediately. The hair was wrapped around Michael’s toe so tight the toe was swollen too much around the hair to safely remove it at home without causing more damage. If this were ever the case for you, I would skip the screaming pain you are putting them through and just go to the ER. The situation is a scary one because so much could potentially happen in just a short amount of time. I am still getting over wrapping my head around everything but am thankful Michael’s toe is looking better currently than worse! Little man was a tough cookie and hung in through it all even with a very upset tummy. Story time is over for now and as always beautiful, cheers!