Stitches and prayers

"Mom, may I have some scissors?" asked Madison.

"sure, here they are."  I proceeded to grab the closest pair and they happened to be adult scissors.  Madison said, "thanks" and headed to the living room to work on an art project with Abby.  I was working on a Bill of Sale before the man came to look at our 1996 corolla and went out to help Brian clear out the car and make sure there weren't items of ours left in the car.  It was about this time I hear Madison screaming on the porch saying, "I'm cut."  She is cradling her thumb in one hand while the blood seeps through her fingers onto the porch.  I came running and helped her to calm down.  All she could keep saying was, "I don't want to go to the hospital.  I don't want stitches."  It just escalated from there to the point where she was screaming it, "No, No, I want them to just glue it."  Abby was crying in the living room and looked at me and said, "I said sorry."  Tears streaming down her face she ran upstairs to her room and continued to sob on her bed.  I was trying to deal with Madison at this point to see if stitches were needed, so I couldn’t go and comfort Abby right away.  When I first saw the cut that went from fingernail to fingernail across the fleshy part of her thumb, I knew stitches were inevitable. 

The man wanting to look at our car finally got there, bought the car, and left.  We had called Sarah S. and her husband came and got Abby and took her to their house (third time taking our other child while we went to the ER in the past 6 months) and had her there all night.  We arrived at the ER and I was sure they were going to put Social Services on us due to our horrible track record.  Well, the ordeal was rather long and painful, as they had to give her two shots to numb her thumb, and then proceeded to give her four stitches.  There was lots of screaming, crying, anger, and defiance on Madison’s part since getting staples in her head was a very fresh memory. 

Fast forward 9 days to when we were to take the stitches out.  We were just going to take them out while Madison was sleeping as we had done with her staples, but decided it might be best to let her calmly have this done while awake so she could practice appropriate behavior for these situations.  Once we told her that, she lost it.  She said, “you already gave me a choice and I chose to have them out when I was sleeping.  I will not get them taking out.  I don’t want to…etc.”  So, we proceeded to give a banana stitches and allowed Madison to take them out.  That still wasn’t enough, so I proceeded to put a stitch in my finger just below the skin and allowed her to take it out.  We even showed her a you-tube video of a little girl getting stitches out of her head and the little girl on the video was very calm.  We thought this would help her know it wasn’t painful.  We had a prayer with her in her room while kneeling at her bed and then went downstairs to take out the stitch.  With an ice cream cone in sight, we were finally able to take one stitch out and promised her we would do the rest that night.  It was dramatic and didn’t go as we had hoped, but we got the one stitch out and headed to McDonalds for an ice cream cone.

At 11 pm that night we tried to take them out, but she woke up and wouldn’t let us.  We told her they had to come out tomorrow or else they would get infected.  I then prayed and pleaded with the Lord that tomorrow she wouldn’t have the anxiety and would be calm and let us take out the rest of the three stitches.  I fell asleep pleading with the Lord and when I woke up to Madison by my bed she said, “Can we take my stitches out now?”  I was sure I hadn’t heard that right so I asked her what she said.  She repeated it very calmly and matter of fact like.  I was so relieved and hoped this would last to the time of actually taking them out.  After breakfast she went to Brian and had him cut the stitches one at a time as she pulled out of the stitch from her thumb.  She came to me proudly and showed me the stitches (I was in the shower) and so I told her to go and put them in a bag.  Well, they were stuck to her finger so she asked Abby to pull them off.  Abby did and then went and threw them in the garbage.  Madison was distraught.  She so wanted to put them in her baby book.  We sifted through the garbage and scoured the floor only to find nothing.  We found a tiny piece of the stitches left on the tweezers and used that for the book.  Oh, the drama.  I am just so grateful for the Lord answering my pleadings and letting me know he cared and is aware of each of his children.  He will answer my prayers when the timing is right and is his willJ  I needed that.


Pictures to come:-)