Kelton's Finger

If you don't do well with pictures of, or descriptions of injuries, this post may not be for you.  It's not super graphic, but consider yourself warned.

Every Monday (and Friday) I go play volleyball at the church.  I take the kids with me, and so do other people.  The kids were running around and being a bit crazy.  Kelton was chasing Natalie and some other girls.  Natalie didn't want him to.  So she was running around the out of bounds line in the gym and ran into a classroom that is right there and slammed the door shut so Kelton wouldn't be able to come in.  Unfortunately, Kelton's finger ended up in the door.

I knew it had gotten smashed, but then I saw it was bleeding.  I figured it must be the nail.  But then I saw what was really bleeding.  The door had cut through, in a large upside-down "U" shape, the entire meaty part of the tip of his finger.  It was even pulled open and out from the rest of his finger.  I was actually surprised that I couldn't see the bone because this was not a shallow cut of skin.  It really was the whole padding part.  There was a medical resident there playing with us and he helped me wrap it up so we could go to the doctor.  Wrapping it up pinched everything back together.  Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately for most people) I didn't get a picture of it while it was open.

We then spent a while driving trying to figure out a cost efficient place to have his finger fixed.  We have an insurance plan where we pay every penny up to our somewhat high deductible, so I knew that we would be paying full price for whatever was done.  And can I just insert, it is a huge pain to not be able to know upfront what I will be charged for medical expenses.  When I am the one paying for it all out of pocket, I want to be able to make an informed decision of the cost effectiveness of different places.  Anyway, there is an urgent care right close to my house, but luckily I knew, from someone else's misfortune, that because they are an extension of a hospital in town, they bill at the ER rate and not that of an urgent care.  (Soooo sneaky and shady, in my opinion.)   So, we weren't going there.  We went to Kelton's doctor first, who said she couldn't do anything.  To insert another complaint, it is very frustrating that pediatricians no longer do much more than check on healthy kids and diagnose ear infections.  So, on we went to a walk in clinic in town.  Normally, they would have been able to help, but they didn't have someone there today who could do stitches.  So we then drove into town to an Urgent Care clinic. 

After all that, the nurse practitioner wasn't quite sure what to do and ended up just glueing it shut.  He thought it was staying closed well enough to try glue over stitches.  They did do an x-ray to check for bone fragments.  There were none.  Afterward, it made me wonder why someone else along the way couldn't have just glued it closed.  They can't do x-rays at the pediatrician's office (which they should...) but they could have sent me to another place in town to get the x-ray.  Then they could have glued it closed.  Our medical system is so messed up.  It's like everything is set up to make you pay the most amount of money possible.  It's like they want you to have to go to the ER for everything.

You can see that up the sides and over the tip of his finger is where it was cut.  It was attached at the bottom.  And really, "cut" is the wrong word.  It was sliced all the way through there.

Tomorrow I am going to call his pediatrician.  The nurse practitioner who saw Kelton didn't clean his finger with anything and didn't prescribe antibiotics.  He literally dabbed glue around the edges of the cut and put two strips over the top to hold it together and then put a bigger bandage around it.  He told us not to take any of the bandages off for 48 hours.  I'm not seeing how this isn't going to get infected.  So I want to see what Kelton's pediatrician thinks.

Kelton is doing just fine.  It doesn't seem to be bothering him much at all.  I gave him some ibuprofen a few hours ago, but that's the only medication he's had.  This is the only picture I could get him to give me of his bandaged finger.  He looks so sad and miserable, but really, he is just watching Star Wars and didn't want to be bothered.  :)

More of a Home

Today I finished most of the decorating in our front room. It's so nice to finally have things up on the wall. (The family picture is really old, but our newer, still two years outdated one was oriented the wrong direction.  We are getting a new one soon anyway.)

I somewhat had this same grouping in our other house, but it hadn't been up for very long.  And there is one more picture on there now.  Sorry to disappoint anyone hoping to see a name on the baby's magnetic photo board.  Nate and I both have one to put on there, but for the time being, they don't quite match.  Kind of a problem.  They almost do, but not close enough to call it good. 

I got the idea for this sign from my sister Melanie.  I think she got the idea from esty, which is a great place to go to steal great ideas.  Anyway, you use everyday object to spell words.  The guy at the one hour photo made my day by asking if they were professional photos.  It made me feel good that he thought they were good enough to ask that question (for their copyright reasons, I'm sure).  I have a non-DSLR camera that I fight with all the time and don't really know how to use.  And to give credit, I didn't photograph the "E."  Melanie did, but let me use her file.  If you can't tell, the "W" is my church shoes, the first "B" is a pearl necklace I have, and the second "B" is the top of my gate (turned sideways).  The "E" is the swirly metal end of something Melanie has, maybe an easel.  I am going to put pictures in the two other mat openings on each side.  I'm thinking I will put a picture of Nate and I on the left and a picture of all the kids on the right.

This is a small section of wall by our sliding doors that go to the backyard.  The table is there on the right.  I got the unfinished shelves at Michaels and Natalie and Kelton helped me paint them black.

Closer up view.  I actually made everything on this wall, at least in part.  Including the candles.

Despite how this picture looks, these little crazies didn't really survive the day being neglected by their mother.  Fighting/crying levels were much higher than usual today.  But now I'm done, so we can play more tomorrow.

Church Callings

Just a quick update on my church callings:  After a little over three years of playing the organ, I got released last week.  When asked about playing the organ by a member of the bishopric a little while ago, I did mention that it was going to be a bit difficult, mostly for Nate, once we had this new baby plus our other three fairly young kids.  Some moms have to manage their little kids by themselves during sacrament all the time, but dads aren't as used to it, mostly because they don't do it at home all day long.  Nate barely survived by himself with Damon as a newborn and Kelton as a crazy two year old.  And really, it only worked for me because Damon was bottle fed from really early on.  So, now with two crazy boys who like to fight and bother each other, and a soon to be newborn baby (Natalie is always really good), it was time for me to rejoin them.  I didn't mind playing the organ at all.  I will miss the quiet of sitting alone on the stand for the beginning and end of the meeting.  But it will also be nice to not be worried about not being able to help Nate keep the kids quiet, especially during the Sacrament.  (Or chasing my escaped two year old (Damon) across the front of the stand during the sacrament.  He was ever so nicely repetitively yelling, "NO, MOMMA!" the whole time I tried to catch up with him.)

Today was my first time sitting with my family for all of sacrament meeting since Kelton was about a year old.  I think having me there on the bench for the first 25 minutes of the meeting threw my boys off a bit.  They weren't very good.  It is going to take some re-adjusting/re-training. 

Also, this evening was the third time I have held choir practice.  I was called to be the choir director back in January or February.  But, along with being super not excited about it, I had morning sickeness hit at about the same time.  That pretty much took me out of commission for a few months.  Then we had a few months of crazieness in buying our new house, setting the other house up as a rental, and moving/settling in to the new house.  Once that was all finished, I was able to find some music for the choir to sing and then figure out a time when we would be able to meet.  Our church meetings start at 8:00 a.m. and we share the building with three other wards, plus one more ward that meets in a school because we can't do five blocks in our small building on Sunday, but they still use the building for all other purposes.  So, finding a time for choir practice when people would actually come was a bit challenging.  We meet from 6:00-7:00 p.m.

But we are underway now.  This calling is a bit different for me.  I am way more used to being the one behind the piano.  And directing a choir is different from just conducting the music.  But I am slowly figuring it out and it seems to be going okay.  Hopefully the choir members feel the same way.  We even almost have one song ready to sing.