One step back

Yesterday, shortly after Tom went to visit his mom in the hospital (she fell again), Natalie started crying.  I always check her belly first thing when she cries, because I'm so paranoid about something happening with her sutures.  Well, this time, it WAS the reason she was crying.  More than half of the incision (which was about 2 inches long) was open.

I'll admit I was a little freaked out.  It still grosses me out to think of what it looked like (I could never be a doctor or a nurse).  I called Tom and he came right home.  Then I called the surgeon's office and they paged the surgeon on call.  I never got a call back, even after I called again.  We went to the ER as soon as Tom arrived home.

We checked in at 5:40 and ended up leaving right around 8, which as ER visits go, isn't that long.  I took an overnight bag along, thinking she might have to go into surgery again.  But the doctor said it was just the epidermis that opened.  The rest of the surgical area hadn't opened any further.  He put steri-strips on it (I always called them butterfly bandages when I was a kid) to close the incision and said to check with the surgeon today.  We have an appointment with the surgeon tomorrow.

So how did this happen?  My first thought was that Natalie dug her fingers in, because she's had the habit of playing with her mic-key, then the stoma, before.  But Tom and I think it split open when she pulled herself up on a chair...it stretched her skin and broke open the surgical glue.

I'm disappointed because we were nearly at the end of the two weeks of no playground activities and now we might have to start over again.  But in the grand scheme of things, we'll get through this and she will play again...it might be a while, though.