Not for the faint of heart!

We went to the playground this morning with Jessica, Clare, & Francis...a normal occurrence until this happened...

Honestly, this picture doesn't do it justice since you loose the depth aspect. Its a giant gaping hole exposing the insides of his tongue muscles. Oh ya and he got it from the underside as well. Thankfully the holes didn't line up so it didn't officially go all the way through.
A call to the pediatricians office sent us to the local urgent care center. Mommy was slightly panicking on the way as his tongue was so swollen he couldn't close his mouth anymore. Forty five minutes later Curtis finally stopped screaming bloody murder when he fell asleep in the back seat. As soon as the doctor walked in we had to wake him up and screaming resumed. That HAD to hurt! They believed that even though tongues normally heal pretty well on their own, this one was so jagged and deep that it would probably need stitches. So they sent us to Texas Children's Hospital. The first doctor at TCH said she couldn't decide if we should stitch it or not, the second doctor said the same thing, finally they sent us into the procedure preparation room and brought in an entire team of doctors to decide. In the end it was thought that the procedure was too risky for a borderline call. Obviously they would have had to sedate him in order to do the stitches, the bleeding involved in the procedure is quite a bit given the rich blood flow in the tongue, the airways of toddlers is not something to mess with, and the pain and discomfort of a stitch on a little tongue was in the end not worth it. Thank God! We were both really anxious about him having to be put under. So we are now home with our minced meat tongued child...sigh! The really sad thing is that it wasn't even a spectacular fall. It was a total run of the mill happens a thousand times a day little trip that sent us running around from hospital to hospital! Poor little guy!