Strangled Piggies

Let me give you a little history.  At Pemberlynn's 2 month appointment I was sitting in the room listening to the doctor give me the rundown while I tried to get a pesky hair that I had found on Pemberlynn's toe unraveled.  Feeling I was being rude I told the doctor that I was sorry, but that I was having a hard time getting the hair off of her toe.  Immediately the doctor pushed her chair over to us saying, "We need to get that hair off of her toe right now!"  I was thinking "What is the big deal?  Its just a hair."  After we successfully got the hair off she told me that it can be very dangerous to get a hair wrapped around little kids toes, but she also told me that it wasn't too common.  Fast forward to today.........It is about 4:00pm and Pemberlynn has just woken up from about a 2 hour nap.  She is fussing pretty bad, and really stinky.  So I lay her down to start changing her diaper and when I pull her foot out of her pajama's I realize that something is wrong.  The middle toe on her foot is HUGE, swollen and starting to turn slightly purple!!!!  I start freaking out.  I look closely and realize that there is something (a hair) wrapped around her toe a million times and that it is cutting off circulation to her toe.  I try to pull some off, but her toe had swollen so much that it had started cutting into the top of her toe and on the bottom of her toe it had cut so deep that you could no longer see the hair and it was starting to bleed.  Luckily my mom was home so I was able to pack up Pemberlynn and leave the rest of the girls with her.  I drove as fast as I could to the insta-care.  

I had never been to this insta care before, and there are a couple of different medical groups all in one spot.  So I went inside and asked the receptionist if this was the urgent care.  This is how the conversation went.  Her: "Do you need to be seen?  I think I can get you in in a couple of minutes." Me: "My baby needs to be seen right away."  Her: "Well, then you need to go to the hospital because I have a bunch of paperwork that I still need to enter and then I need you to have fill out a whole bunch of paperwork."  Me: "Well, my baby's toe looks like it is going to fall off, so I would really appreciate it if someone could come and look at it now!"  Her: "Hold on."  Then she turns around to the nurse that is sitting behind her and says "____ can you come and look at this baby's toe?  Her mom thinks that it is going to fall off. "(all said while rolling her eyes).  Nurse:  "Sure."  Nurse walks over and looks at Pemberlynn's toe.  Nurse:  "She needs to be seen right away!  I am going to go and get the doctor to look at this.  You might need to take her to the ER."  Me: "Sigh".  Doctor comes over.  Doctor:  "I think that we can take care of her here, bring her back right away."  So I follow the nurse to the back and I get Pemberlynn out of her carseat so that she can be weighed.  While I am doing this the doctor comes and puts a numbing cream on her toe "so that it won't hurt when I take the hair off".  After the weighing (which by the way, she ways 13lbs now!)  we went into the room where I would be the prisoner of a screaming baby for the next hour.  The doctor cleans around the toe and then pulls out this needle.  He then holds Pemberlynn's foot and goes to poke the hair off?  I'm not sure.  But I am sure that he definitely poked Pemberlynn.  Well, poked is not the right word.  He made a huge laceration across the top of her toe.  The laceration came from Pemberlynn jerking her foot when he poked her.  To this he said "Don't move your foot."  Ok, now this is a man who has gone to who knows how much school to become a doctor and he is telling a 3 month old not to move her foot her he is stabbing it with a needle?!  So the cut is pretty deep and it is bleeding pretty bad.  In fact, it isn't stopping.  The doctor continued to put pressure on it again and again for at least 5 minutes and then I guess he decided that he didn't want to wait any longer so he just started poking again at her toe with the needle.  All of this time Pemberlynn is screaming bloody murder.  After another 10 minutes of poking, the doctor decides that he is going to get some Novicane to numb her toe.  So he comes back with this syringe full of Novicane.  He goes to stick it in her foot and what happens?  Of course she jerks her foot away and it bends the needle sideways making a tear at the base of her toe.  And again, a little more agitated this time, he tells Pemberlynn to not move.  So now we have blood coming from everywhere off of the toe, and still no hair removed.  Finally after another 5 minutes of unbearable screaming we have a breakthrough, a piece of hair is removed.  The doctor sighs a sigh of relief.  Doctor:  "I'm going to let you sit for minute and then come back and see if the creases in her toe are smoothing out any, but I am positive that I got the hair." While he is gone I am looking at her toe thinking, "there is no way that he got all of the hair.  Her toe still looks like a huge red and purple Michelin Tire man."  At this point I am pretty positive that there is still more hair around her toe.  When the doctor came back in he said, "What do you think?  I think it looks like we got all of the hair off."  Me: "Ummmm, I think that there is still some hair wrapped around her toe."  Doctor:  "Sigh.  Ok, let me check again, but I am pretty sure that I got it all."  So he takes out his trusty little light and shines it on her toe again.  Doctor: "Oh, there is another hair wrapped around there."  Well, there wasn't just one hair, there was a big tangle of hair that came off this time and that was what was causing the most damage.  I wanted to say "I told you so"  to the doctor, but I figured that wasn't very polite.  After he got the hair off he caked the entire top of her foot in antibiotic cream and wrapped it up.  It was so sad.  The bottom of her toe was cut really deep and the top of the toe was also cut really deep.  These were the cuts from the hair, there were also the cuts from the doctor.  I was given the instructions to watch for more swelling, just in case there was another hair, but the doctor was confident this time that he had gotten all of it :)  He told me to check it periodically to make sure that it wasn't turning purple and dying.  Very reassuring.  Well, it is 5 hours later and I just looked at her toe, and it looks tons better!  I have to put antibiotics on it 2-3 times a day for a while, but things should be fine.

Now I just have to say, this is my 5th child and I had NEVER heard of a toe being strangled by a hair until I was at Pemberlynn's 2 month appointment, and I was told that it was pretty uncommon.  Ok, this happened twice within a month!  And the second time was almost fatal for her poor little piggy.  The doctor at the insta care told me that Pemberlynn's toe was the worse case that he had ever seen.  It's crazy!  Who looks inside all of their kids socks and PJ's to make sure that a stray hair isn't waiting in the depths to take its next victim?  So I warn all of you now, check you little piggies often!

I didn't take a picture of her toe when it looked like it was about to fall off, it was the last thing on my mind, but at the top is a picture of when it was all wrapped up.