Poor Gracie

Let me preface this post by saying that we jinxed Gracie when we named her Gracie. She is anything but Graceful and quite frankly clutzy- but we sure do love her. If there is ever an accident going to happen, a drink to be spilled, or someone to get hurt, Gracie is the gal.

On this particular day, I was in doing the laundry and heard Gracie start to cry, nothing unusual. She came into where I was dancing around and crying saying she had hurt her side. I say the typical things to her that I usually would, "Darn it" "That's too bad" "I bet that it hurts" etc. She lifts up her shirt and I realize that we are dealing with more than a little scratch. I pick her up and start looking at it- the light isn't great so I go into the big family room and look and to my dismay there was a piece of wood sticking out of her side. I try to pull it out, but it was not moving and I was worried not knowing how big it was. I call the doctor's office to see if we can bring her in there to avoid the emergency room, they say yes and I get her ready to go. At this point, I call Sean and tell him to get home immediately and call Nat and ask her to get in her car right that second to come and get Brooklyn from school and get Ella. The doctor's office calls back and says to take her to InstaCare or the ER- we opted for the ER. Sean gets home looks at it and tells Gracie he will give her 50 bucks if she will let him try and get it our. Bless her heart, she did, but it didn't work. So we load her up and head to the ER. The poor thing had to get shots inside of it to numb it so the doctor get could it out. When it came time, there was a doctor, 2 nurses, Sean, and I holding her down. The doctor had to make a little incision and dug around for what seemed like hours, although I am sure it was minutes and got several different pieces out. The nurse asked the doctor what the odds were that it would be so superficial and in horizontally. Which is very lucky because it could've pierced her abdominal wall creating other issues. The nurse made the comment to us that she works with a lot of kids now and over the years and could tell that Gracie has a very sweet disposition and what a sweet little girl she is. Which is very true, she may be a clutz, but she is super sweet. That made me tear up I must say. When the doctor was done, he said that the incision he had made could use a few stitches, but there is more risk for infection. We opted for a scar and not stitches. I was keeping my family up-to-date during the ordeal and my Aunt Paula and Marlee could not stand being at home while Gracie was going through this so they drove over and were in the waiting room when we came out. Gracie was sure glad to see them- as was I. We feel so very blessed that this incident wasn't any worse than it was. Good thing for her little lion and Sean's phone- she watched Angelina Ballerina the whole time taking her mind off of it, somewhat.

So you might wonder how exactly she got a piece of wood in her side. We have- or had- this little stool that was at my Grandma Ila's house and we have had it for 8 years. Well one of the spindles on it broke several years ago creating a jagged edge- Sean thought we should get rid of it, but it held a lot of sentimental value to me and I always planned on fixing it. So it never go thrown out. Gracie was standing on the stool trying to get something out of a cupboard and somehow fell and ended up with the wood. I don't think it would ever happen again in a million years. We won't have to wait and see because Sean took out the stool and it now resides in the landfill.