Valentine's Day 2019

This year Valentine's Day was a whirlwind! I helped Zoe do her Valentines Wednesday night. Dave woke up early Thursday morning and took Isaac to seminary then came back with flowers and Ghirardelli chocolate for me and a teddy bear for Zoe. So sweet! I know it might be cliche but I really love getting flowers, especially on Valentine's Day. The roses smelled amazing and the chocolate didn't last nearly as long as it should have. Dave drove Zoe to school for me. I took Noah to school then took Jonas to PMO (parents morning out, a one day a week playschool at the Methodist Church). He's been really clingy recently since I've been working again temporarily and didn't want to go but I had waited in the parking lot for half an hour for it to be 9:00 so I made him go, I'm so mean!

While Finn played at home I cleaned the kitchen, family room, and dining room super super well. Also with me working the housekeeping has fallen behind a bit and I wanted Dave to have something nice to come home to! I dropped Finn at a friend's house, then picked up Jonas early. I had an IEP meeting for Noah's gifted program at school at 11:30 so Jonas came with me. After the meeting I picked my friend Whitney's son Eli up from the doctor's office--she was supposed to drop him at my house at 12:15 but my meeting went long. We got Eli, then picked Finn back up and we went home to play. Whitney came after her daughter's doctor appointment and hung out 'til school pickup time. I got the kids and drove Zoe straight to the dentist. Dave picked up Noah and dropped him at the dentist and I stayed while he took the other kids home. I made steak, salmon, baked potatoes, roasted asparagus, and cheese fondue for dinner. I wanted everybody to have something they liked for the day of love, so they'd know I love them (because we don't really do Valentine's presents and their friends do, so I didn't want them to feel totally gypped, ha!). I had bought the bread for the fondue on Tuesday so the outside was pretty tough and crusty, so I used the bread knife attachment on my electric knife to slice it. I still had to push down pretty hard to get through the crust so I only cut half of it.

After dinner was over, I decided to slice up the rest of the french bread to put into a ziploc. As I was slicing, somehow my left thumb was in the wrong place at the wrong time and my electric knife went right into it! It didn't hurt immediately but I knew it was bad and yelled "Oh my gosh, I just cut my thumb off!" I looked over and saw Dave running down the hall from Finn's bath. I immediately put it under water and then wrapped it in a paper towel. We gave the kids a few instructions and then ran out the door. In the car I couldn't stop apologizing, I felt so bad. I know that this brings extra medical expenses that we don't need and would be such a headache. He was so sweet, it obviously was an accident, but I just kept apologizing. He took me first to the instacare (waaay cheaper and faster) but when the doctor came out to the waiting room to look at it the blood was just pouring off my hand and I saw for the first time that I had cut through the nail as well. She was worried they'd have to take the nail off to stitch underneath and suggested it better be done at the ER instead, so we went that way.

At the hospital the parking lot was completely packed. Dave dropped me off and I waited in line to check in. I told them about my blood disorder so they got me into triage right away to wrap it better so it would help stop the bleeding. I told the nurse I have 5 kids at home, and asked if I should send my husband home to be with them (meaning was it going to be a long wait?) and she said, "Yes, I would." So Dave went home. He didn't want to but I could tell it was going to be a long night. My thumb was hurting and throbbing and my phone was dying so I looked through my purse adn found my Book of Mormon that I had put in my purse so I could read at work during the slow times. I read for a while, people watched for a while, and listened to the super weird people in the waiting room who were adults and watching slime-making videos on YouTube at full volume. It was so weird. And annoying.

Dave came back around 10:30 pm. He said when he got home Noah said "Can we have fondue now?" Ha! I had planned to do chocolate fondue for dessert. Dave said "Um, you know Mom is in the hospital, right?" and he said "Yeah but can't she just give you the recipe?" Oh man I died laughing when he told me. We watched an episode of AP Bio (Dave said we needed to watch something with anger in it, ha!) with his headphones and laughed like crazy people, man is that show hilarious. Not long after it was over we got called back to a room. My thumb had stopped hurting, it was midnight, and I just wanted to go home at this point. A guy came in to clean it but was missing something and left and never came back. The doctor came in to stitch it around 12:30 am. He put 2 shots in the base of my thumb to numb it and then put 4 stitches in. I kind of wanted to watch, I've never seen it done before, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. He didn't have to take the nail off, but clipped the cut part and put one of the stitches right through my thumbnail. We talked to the doctor a bit, he was from Orem, UT and works at our hospital 16 days out of every month. After he left somebody was supposed to come back to discharge me but nobody came. We were getting close to the time that Jonas sometimes wakes up in the night so we were anxious to leave so I just walked out and asked if we could go. A nurse finally came in and got me discharged. We got home around 1:30 am. I felt so stupid! At least it was a Valentine's to remember, ending with 6 hours in the emergency room.

I asked the doctor before we left how to get the stitches out and he suggested I do it myself, but I said no way. He said to just go back to the ER and they would do it for me 10 days later. 10 days was this past Sunday and the stitches were really bugging me but I just did not want to go back to the hospital. I got out some tweezers and scissors and took out the first 2 but it was so weird and painful, I asked Dave to do the others. He was super nervous but with the two of us we got it done. The one that went right through the nail hurt to come out but the others weren't so bad, it was just the scissors we had weren't really  made for getting underneath stitches. The skin that was stitched down came off yesterday so now I have very pink, painful skin on the end of my thumb. But at least I still have a thumb! And I will be much more careful if I ever get brave enough to use the electric knife again. And we had our chocolate fondue a few days later, just for Noah.