Nailed it!

On Wednesday I was in the middle of the perfectly choreographed dance of getting the dinner in the oven, getting the kids in the car, picking up my daughter from her after school project, driving home, pulling dinner out of the oven, and serving it, Ta Da!, and my youngest son started screaming outside. I was pretty sure that his brother had done something to him and the noise was headed toward the door so I waited. When he walked inside blood was dripping out of his shoe. That's probably not good, especially since we had to be in the car in four minutes to keep on schedule.

More Legos, stat!

I pulled off his shoe and he told the story. He was following his brother around the back yard (ha! I knew he was at the bottom of this!) and he stepped on a board. The board had a nail poking out of it and the nail ended up through his shoe and into his foot, hence the screaming. Luckily the boy clots like it's his job and by the time I had things washed off the bleeding had stopped. A quick dab of antibiotic ointment and a bandaid and we were in the car only one minute late. If the story ended here it would be a nice little story about wound care and excellent time management skills. You might notice however that there are a LOT more words on the page. We're just getting started.
Like all wounds, good parenting says that this little nail stick should be watched for a few days. My kids have cut there feet a bunch of times, and we bandage and watch and things get better and life goes on. He woke up the next morning saying that his foot still hurt, but things really still looked fine. He insisted that he couldn't walk and we chatted about him going to school anyway. In the end we decided to let him stay home and heal. At about 9:30 my wife called and asked about his foot. She's one of those concerned moms. I had been watching it and reluctantly admitted that it was starting to swell and even more reluctantly agreed that I should call the pediatrician and see if they could get him in to have a look at it. I was torn between knowing that having a doctor look at it was the right thing to do, and my general belief that most things heal if you give them a few days.
At the pediatricians office we were met by our usual super happy doctor asking why we were here. I explained and she looked at his foot. Shortest appointment.....ever. She was out of the room and on the phone with the hospital and the next thing you know we're back in the car and on our way to a more serious medical environment.
It seems that puncture wounds, like those caused by stepping on a nail, are serious business. The nail can shove a bunch of stuff into the hole, but bleeding stops before the body can really flush it back out. The only thing worse than stepping on a nail is stepping on a nail with your shoes on because on the way through the shoe the nail picks up all of the nasty things living in your shoe and shoves them up in the wound. That cute little boy created the perfect storm of circumstances for a multi day medical emergency, and that's what he got.
As this story took three days to play out, it's going to take me three days to tell the story. For now I'll give you the bullet point version so nobody has to worry, and I'll fill in the details later.
-The boy steps on a nail.
-Wound gets all red and puffy.
-Pediatrician stops being cheery, becomes serious and sends us to the hospital.
-Three days on IV antibiotics.
-An x-ray and a couple of MRI's.
-Hospital chairs suck to sleep in.
-Home safe and sound.