Construction Site Injury

Friday afternoon, the kids were outside building things with scraps of wood from our construction. Cai was climbing on a short homemade ladder and tried to pick up a board that was full of nails.  Well, he dropped it and hit his leg.  When the board fell it left a piece of wood in his leg with his pants leg pinned to his leg, too.

I was going to try and pull it out but we didn’t know if it had hit a vein or artery so we decided to wait and ask our doctor.  She was off and the on-call doctor told us to take him to the ER.

They got him back pretty quickly which was nice because you can wait in the ER for hours.  I heard them discussing Cai outside calling it a splinter.  That kind of makes you feel like a foolish momma bringing your child in for just a “splinter”!

Glad we took him in because the outside part broke off while he was trying to pull it out.  The “splinter” was lodged in his leg so they had to make an incision to get it out.  Yes, they did numb it for him.  First with lidocaine  cream and then with a shot.  After they pulled it out, the nurse said, “I don’t call that a splinter!”

Cai was a trooper.  It didn’t seem to bother him before or after. We only had screaming during the procedure while I and two others held him down for the doctor.

Here’s his “splinter” that was in his leg.  The entire piece was in there because the other broke off. 
They put it in a vial for him to bring home and show his brothers and sisters!

BTW, they did have to cut a hole in his jean shorts around it to get it loose :(

He’s doing fine and was back at it today.