So who had 17 months in the “How Long til Judah Gets Stitches” pool? Congratulations. You win.Another trip to Qingdao Municipal today for my son’s inevitable first stitches. Two to be exact, after a headfirst dive into the corner of the coffee table. It seems you don’t get to live in China long without having a painful and sometimes humorous health care story to tell. Thankfully, this one is not ours. However, just a month and a half after the ER doctor sewed my wife’s nerve to her tendon with no anesthetic we walked in a bit apprehensive (that is our painful health care story by the way). On a tip from a friend we discovered that the ER surgeon was not the only option for stitches and asked to go to the Dental Clinic section of the hospital (not sure why we didn’t think of that before). There we met a delightfully skilled surgeon and following a few brief moments of horrific screams (see above) Judah was stitched good as new (see below). Now we’re trying to figure out how to keep him from rubbing bananas in his bandage.
Sidenote – the whole trip cost about 20 US dollars which is five dollars less than our copay in the States (the upside of Chinese health care).
Other Sidenote – Our Stateside copay is about one one hundredth of the cost for my wife’s stitches factoring in three trips to Beijing and a surgery to fix the first, botched attempt (the downside).
One More Sidenote – Great article on why toddlers and coffee tables don’t mix.
That picture of Judah crying hurts my heart! I want to laugh about the whole “how come we didn’t think to go to the dental clinic for Lawanda’s hand…” part but I just can’t get over his screaming face. Poor guy!
It’s ok Stephanie. You can laugh. The screaming was only temporary and by the time we left he had a room full of nurses wrapped around his finger. Also the screaming had very little to do with actual stitches and much to do with the fact that we were trying to hold him still. You can’t see it in the picture but he’s working me over pretty good. Still sore (me not him).
Glad he is okay. Discussed with others today the first time our sons got stitches – I think my son was about 17 months when he ran in to the corner of the wall and got stitches in his head. Hope Judah doesn’t have as many more instances of stitches as Michael did before he finished school. Parenting is sometimes challenging isn’t it? But who would give it up?
Well said Jane. Judah is more and more fun every day but wow.