William’s Second Visit to the ER (January 25, 2008)

William, our first born son, was not a hyperactive child; in fact, he generally took most things at a slow and steady pace. But this did not prevent him from having accidents. The occasion for one such incident was a Sunday in November 1968, when he was twenty-two months old. While walking across the living room floor, William seemed to trip on an air bubble and fell face-first onto the wooden edge of the living room sofa arm.  He hit his left cheek and it split open about an inch and a half.  I remembered thinking, “Why do these accidents always occur on a Sunday?”

        Our son William was born on a Sunday.  The poem we learned as children about Sunday’s child said: The child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.  This description fit William well; he was a very easygoing, cheerful child, but it did not address his propensity for accidents.

     Only four short months had passed since William’s incident with the dog that took him on his first ER visit.  Had this been a weekday, we would have headed to the pediatrician’s office; but it was another Sunday, so we had but one choice: another trip to the emergency room.

     I hoped that, if we were lucky, the ER doc would be willing to put in a couple of stitches and we would be on our way.  Unfortunately, in the big city (San Francisco) the medical establishment always feels the need to bring in the experts; so, once again, we found ourselves settling into the ER awaiting the arrival of the plastic surgeon on call.

      The ER doc who examined William said, “Because it is his face, we want to get a plastic surgeon so he doesn’t scar badly.”  We spent the allotted four hours per protocol in the ER, but, fortunately this time, the plastic surgeon allowed us to take William home after his ordeal.  He gave me an appointment card to bring William to his office in five days for his suture removal.

     We still had no car, so I gathered up a city map and the Muni bus schedules and planned our route. The office was not close to home. We had to make three transfers to get to the office, a trip that took about ninety minutes.

     We didn’t have to wait long before we were called into the doctor’s office on our appointed date.  The doctor was cheerful on his arrival, which put William at ease.  “How are you doing, boy?” the doctor asked.  “OK” said William. “Let’s get those stitches out.” I pinned down William’s chest with my upper body and held his head securely between my hands.  The doctor told William he had to lie very still, which he did.  Doctor clipped the sutures, pulled them out with his clamp and Presto: the suture line split open. So much for plastic surgery!  Rather than re-stitching, the doctor just steri-stripped the wound.  Had I done this in the beginning, we’d have saved a lot of time with the same outcome.

     Yes, the scar is still faintly visible on William’s cheek at the age of 41; but we don’t call it a scar, we call it a character line.

     Five years passed before William had another facial injury.  We had moved to Davis, and I had taken William to the family doctor’s office because he was complaining of severe abdominal pain.  Because his father had had a ruptured appendix a few years earlier, I wasn’t taking any chances with William.  By the time we were in the exam room and the doctor arrived, William’s pain had dissipated.  We chatted with Dr. Vaughn briefly and headed to the parking lot.  On the way to the car, William tripped over a concrete divider and split his forehead open.  Fortunately, we just walked back into the office and Dr. Vaughn stitched him back together again.

     William took all of his accidents in stride as a child when they occurred. But we have noticed they seemed to have had some long-term effect on him.  As an adult, William avoids doctors like the plague.