A Hairy Day

What do you get when you mix a hair, a toe, and four hospitals all together? It’s hard to even know where to begin, but the short answer is: A very long day. Such a day belonged to our family yesterday. The story is complicated and may seem to last forever, but the majority of these events occurred within a twelve hour period.

The morning had been hectic. We had been packing, cleaning, and scurrying about since the crack of dawn. It was the Saturday of a three day weekend and we were preparing to head out of a town for a camping trip. Since we would be camping, dirty kids were inevitable, so we decided to make sure they were all clean before we left. The three older ones were all bathed sans incident. As I cleaned up the breakfast dishes, my wife bathed the baby.

“Honey,” my wife called to me from the bathroom. “Come look at this.” Not really wanting to be distracted from my task at hand, I reluctantly made my way toward my wife. Upon arrival in the bathroom, I saw one very clean baby boy wrapped in a towel with his little feet sticking out. “Look at his toe, I think there is something wrong,” my wife said.

I glanced down at the questionable digit and quickly deduced that she was indeed right. The best way to describe what I saw was a toe that was falling off. A closer examination revealed a fine strand of hair wrapped in a figure-eight pattern around two toes. On one of the toes, the hair was digging in so tightly that it had sliced through the skin and was nearly to the bone. The brave little guy had never uttered a peep about it to this point, so we had no idea how long it had been in such a condition, but the situation was dire. Parts of the toe were the wrong color and it looked as if the toe would be lost.

Grabbing a pair of scissors and a flashlight, I tried to snip the hair, but the scene was complicated. “I can’t tell exactly where the hair starts and the toe ends,” I said. “It’s too deep. I’m going to call the doctor, but I think we need to get this guy to the ER.” After a brief conversation with the nurse hotline, I was instructed to get to the nearest hospital, as long as it wasn’t Hemet hospital. “But that is the nearest one,” I said.

“That’s not good,” she replied. Hemet’s reputation in the local community is less than stellar, and clearly our health insurance plan agreed. After pecking around on her keyboard for a few seconds, the nurse advised me to go to Rancho Springs, about 40 minutes from our house. Our home hospital, Kaiser Permanente, was about an hour drive and the nurse clearly agreed that time was of the essence.

Fortunately the older kids were mostly dressed, so we threw them in the car and took off for a friend’s house around the corner. As I unloaded my two daughters from the car, I realized that neither had bothered to put shoes on as I had instructed them, but that was the least of my concerns. The beauty of having friends with kids is that there was sure to be an extra pair of shoes laying around the house that would fit them. I pushed my speeds as far as I thought I could without getting pulled over and causing a delay and arrived at the hospital in just under 40 minutes. Fortunately, it was a Saturday morning which also happened to be Valentines day, and the weekend of President’s day. All of these factors combined to create an empty waiting room in the tiny hospital. We were quickly ushered into triage and then assigned an open bed. When the doctor arrived, he asked about the situation and I quickly summed it up. He responded by saying, “Ahh, a hair tourniquet. Well, let’s cut the hair.” That seemed simple enough, so a team quickly assembled to provide light and to restrain the baby. Within seconds, the shrill sounds of a baby in agony filled the small emergency room. The doctor snipped and picked at the injury for about 10 excruciating minutes before informing us that he was going to give the little guy a break and then go back in. “I got a lot of it out and released some of the pressure, but there is still more,” he informed us. After a second round of digging and snipping, he turned to address me and my wife. “Sometimes in these cases,” he said “we have to take them in to surgery and open it up further to make sure we get it all out. It looks like it has gone all the way to the bone and there is a possibility that the tendon has been cut.” Surgery for a hair and a toe? This was indeed getting bizarre. “Since you are with Kaiser, we’ll need to send you there for the surgery,” the doctor informed us. “The good news is that at least it’s not on his pee-pee.”

Soon enough, we were on our way to Riverside, another 45 minutes away. Upon arrival there, we were again quickly given a room and a team of doctors, nurses, and P.A.s all gathered around to see the kid with the hair tourniquet. The orthopedist who had been contacted by the first hospital evaluated him and came to the conclusion that surgery was the best option. “Unfortunately,” she said, “we don’t have a pediatric anesthesiologist on staff here, so we are going to need to transfer him to Fontana.” Okay, another 40 minute drive won’t kill us.

Thirty minutes later, she returned again and informed us that Fontana didn’t have the necessary team of a pediatric orthopedist, pediatric anesthesiologist and pediatrician, so instead we were being transfered to Loma Linda. “I know he is hungry, but don’t feed him anything until after the surgery,” the doctor said before leaving the room one more time.

By this point it was around 2:30 in the afternoon and the last time he had eaten was 1:00. For a two-month-old, this was going to be a long time without so much as a snack. “Does he take a pacifier,” a nurse asked?

“He does now,” I replied. And amazingly, for the first time, he didn’t reject the cork and gladly sucked away. As Justin enjoyed his newfound plug, our wait as interrupted by an announcement on the hospital PA system. “Code Blue, First Floor, Podietry.” From my vantage point, I could see the ER nurse’s station and I have never seen so many confused looks in one place before. “Did they say ‘podiatry’?” they took turns asking each other. “How can you have a code blue in podiatry?” “Sounds like someone’s foot fell asleep again,” one of them said as they all rushed out the door toward the podiatry unit. “Does anyone know where podiatry is?” another asked as the door closed behind him.

An hour later the ER had settled back to normal and Loma Linda had rejected our case. Now the doctor was trying to find a team at Kaiser’s facility in Los Angeles and at Children’s Hospital in L.A. as well Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC). “As soon as we hear back from one of these hospitals, we will send you over,” the nurse told us. Another hour passed and CHOC finally accepted the case.

By now the shift had ended and we had a new nurse. “The ambulance will be here within an hour,” he told us.

“But it is only a 30 minute drive,” I said. “Can’t we just take him ourselves?”

“It’s faster by ambulance,” he replied. I’m good at math, but not a genius, but I think thirty minutes is less than an hour. Fortunately, this guy did have a sense of humor. A few minutes later her returned to the bedside with two cups of red Jell-O. It was close to dinner time, and he must have sensed that we were hungry. “Happy Valentine’s day,” he said. “I figured red was appropriate.”

As with most hospital timelines, the ambulance arrived promptly an hour and forty minutes later. The baby and car seat were strapped to the gurney and my wife went along for the ride while I took our car. After beating the ambulance to the next emergency room, I proceeded to park on the fourth floor of the parking structure and still made it to the ER doors before they took the baby in. So much for the ambulance being faster.

CHOC has an arrangement with a neighboring hospital, so the emergency room and operating rooms are actually at St. Joseph’s hospital. After a brief evaluation by numerous doctors, nurses and residents, each proclaiming the one before a nut, the pediatric orthopedist finally arrived and wheeled little Justin off to surgery. The procedure itself was only about 30 minutes, so it wasn’t long before we were rolling the little guy through an underground tunnel connecting the operating room at St. Joseph’s hospital to the recovery room at CHOC. In case you are counting, this is the fourth hospital of the day, not counting the other four that rejected the case.

Of course, given that our two-month-old son had just been completely knocked out for surgery, they wanted to keep an eye on him overnight. Hospitals are notorious for one thing: not letting anyone sleep. In addition to the baby on the other side of the room crying and nurses coming in and out, someone thought it would be fun to play loud piano music on the PA system from 12:10 a.m. until 12:20 a.m. Sleep was apparently not on the agenda for the evening.

Finally, after a very long night, the doctor came back and gave the nurse permission to start disconnecting the wires and tubes and proclaimed our little guy fit to go home.

After this whole ordeal, I realized the Indians were on to something when they pick their baby names. Maybe it was time to make a slight change to our son’s name. My sister called him Justin Hairy Toes, but I kinda like Just-Ten Toes. I’m sure something will stick.