SUNDELL STORIES: Eventful week

It has been quite and eventful week. On Tuesday, around 1:30 Nixon was playing with an exercise machine ( a ROM to be exact ) and on it it has a chain to make a wheel go round and round. Nixon and the kids play on it constantly. As I was in the kitchen ( which is right next to where the machine is ) I told Nixon that he "better be careful" and not even joking right after I said that the Spirit told me to move him away from the machine ( which I sadly ignored ) and not 5 seconds later Nixon started to scream and cry as he ran to me fingerless. It was the scariest thing ever! As I started to panic I ran and got a paper towel put it on his hand and started to squeeze it, yelled for my mother in-law to come down. We looked for a few minutes for his fingers ( which I could only find the tip of one and put it in a plastic bag with ice ) and rushed him to the hospital down the street. Seriously, NEVER GO TO MOUNTAIN VIEW HOSPITAL! It was awful! As I ran in I told him his fingers got cut off. They proceeded to tell me that they didn't have any doctors that could come look at it right now and that when there was an available room they would get him in. I gave them my information and maybe 30 min later they told me we needed to get an x-ray. I asked them if they could give him something for pain because he had been screaming the entire time. They told me no and that after we got him out of the x-ray they would take us to a room and the nurse would do it then. Well it was a good 50 min before they gave him anything for pain. The nurse we had was very nice though. If I had to guess, I don't think Nixon was in pain. I think that seeing the blood and Peter and I crying made him scared because as soon as the nurse bandaged his hand up ( before any medication ) and you couldn't see blood he was fine and by then we had calmed down. After giving him some meds and antibiotics the doctor came down and told us that they wouldn't be able to attach any of his fingers back even if we were able to find them. The doctor also said that he wouldn't need surgery and that the skin would just grow back on its own ( him telling us that was so unsettling to me. It just didn't make sense how someone's bones could be exposed like that and it would just heal normal on it's own. I know the body can do amazing things, but this seemed way unrealistic to me and painful for Nixon.) The one that I did find we threw away. When we got home Nixon wanted to jump on the tramp ( only my kid...seriously, he's so crazy ) so he ad Peter did then Peter looked and found his other fingers sitting on a ledge part of the ROM where there is a chain and we think he stuck his fingers in the chain and it just sliced them off. Oh...FYI it wasn't all his fingers. On his right hand his index finger just above the knuckle by your nail got cut off, his middle finger just above the middle knuckle, and his ring finger had the tip taken off with no bone taken off, but the bone was sticking out.
Get this...The ER told me to call a specific hand specialist ASAP so I did...waited on hold for 10-15 min then left a message to call me. Called again about an hour later waited again for 10 min left another message then when we got released from the hospital I actually just drove over to make the appointment and guess what they said?! That I had to call the number to make an appointment and that they don't have access to that! No freakin' way! I called Nixon's pediatrician and they got us in the next morning right away and he referred us to an amazing hand specialist.
Like I said before, We took him to the specialist the next day that the pediatrician referred. He told us that he wanted to do surgery first thing the next morning. We got to the outpatient surgery center at 5:30 and they took us back immediatly. They were amazing there. The nurse was so sweet. The doctor said he wanted to cut his bone down and pull the skin over so it wasn't exposed and it would heal faster. As they took Nixon back, he cried for Peter a little bit. An hour and 15 min later the doctor came in and told us that he wanted to keep as much length as he could so he ended up trimming the bone a little bit and cleaning the wounds, then doing a synthetic skin graph. Which from what I understood was like a piece of fabric type and somehow attaching it to the skin and as the skin healed, it would grow around it. That way it still wasn't exposed and they wouldn't have to cut his bone down to pull the skin all the way over. Nixon did amazing! When he woke up he tried shaking the splint off and when he realized he couldn't get it off, it seemed not to bother him that much. He has had a few meltdowns because he can't play motorcross on the x box and on the ipad, but other then that, he has been his same crazy Nixon self. He slept most of the day yesterday and today he slept until 2pm! Amazing. He hasn't complained of pain yet and hopefully he wont. Next week we have the follow up appointment and we'll see how it looks. Oh. They ended up having to take his index finger knuckle by the nail off. So that means he will only have 2 knuckles of his middle and index finger. His ring finger he won't have a nail bed either but will have 3 knuckles. Poor kid. I hate that this happened to him. It makes me sick every time I see the ROM machine. Thankfully we are taking it out. He actually has wanted to play on it today, but no way will I let him even close to it. I have pictures of the fingers we found after, but not of his hand. Don't worry. I'm not posting that. I will post however his hand when it is all healed up and how it looks.

At the ER