So I guess it is almost a right of passage, I mean who hasn’t had to get stitches at least once in their life. For some reason the Osbornes tend to need them a little more often than most and unfortunately more often than not they are needed to close a gash on the head. If I had to guess I would say between my brother, sister and myself we probably had about ten separate incidents where one of us needed to get stitches. No kidding, my parents were even separated at one time and interviewed to make sure they weren’t at fault. Eventually the events end up making an entertaining story one way or the other. Case in point, my brother cracks his head open (I forget if it was camping one or the on in the driveway of my grandparents house) but anyways my grandparents and my parents end up taking him to the hospital. My mom is in the room while they are stitching my brother’s head back together. She claims she could see skull because the wound was so deep. Eventually a doctor comes out and tells my grandma “your daughter will be fine”. My grandma tell the doctor he must have the wrong person because her grandson was here to get stitches, there isn’t anything wrong with her daughter. The Dr. then explains to my grandma that while stitching up my brother, my mom decided to drop to the floor like a rag doll. Apparently she at least thought she could see skull and that was too much for her.

On another occasion my sister ended up splitting her head open (I think she fell while skating in the church basement). Anyways instead of shaving a spot on her head, the Dr. decided that using hair on each side of the wound tied together would work. And what do you know, it got the job done. Not sure if is scarred up real nasty or anything but maybe if she loses all her hair or shaves her head, we will know some day. But again, that makes for a somewhat fun story to tell.

I don’t really have any crazy stories of my own, I have several scars but nothing fun, at least nothing that I can remember (go figure I have a hard time remembering the details surrounding my head cracking open). However, I can say that you should alway keep your mouth closed when rebounding a basketball, or at least wear a mouthpiece. In highschool I did just that (well no I did the opposite actually) and ended up with one of my front teeth sunk into some kids head (don’t worry the tooth was still attached to me, I didn’t lose, I just had to jerk it out of his head). Anyways he got stitches and I got a root canal, so that should count as a funny stitches story.

So I guess it is now time for my daughter to start in on her stitches stories. Hopefully there won’t be many but we do have our first. On February 9, 2010, Ali fell, hit her head on a step and cracked it open pretty good. She was playing at the sitter’s house when she fell over and hit her head on the step to and from the sunken living room. On a side note, I have never understood the purpose of a sunken living room. I mean, can you name one positive about it? They require a step that ends up tripping anyone headed to or from the room. If you are lucky you just walk away with a bruised ego; otherwise, you may end up with stitches or a broken ankle. Just make the damn room level with the rest of the house. Just another stupid 80s fad, unfortunately this one isn’t as easy to fix as putting down the Aqua Net and restyling your hair, pulling the shoulder pads out of your shirt, putting down the boom box, taking off the glitter glove and stop trying to moon walk, taking off the leg warmers, and putting away the slap bracelets. Anyways, back to Ali hitting her head on the sunken living room step. I quickly went over and picked her up at the sitter’s house. She was quietly sitting on the sitter’s lap with a little blood trickling down from above her right eye. We gathered her stuff and I took her over to the urgent care center about a half-mile up the road. I decided that was the better route than trying to head over to the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Close to Home Center which is only about 3.5 miles from our house, but because this happened during another snow storm and the streets sucked, the distance was too much. The drive would have been a good 20 minutes, the urgent care only took about 3. Anyways, Ali traveled like nothing was wrong as long as I kept feeding her some Nature’s Choice graham cracker sticks. We eventually got into a waiting room where the doctor saw Ali. At first she wanted to glue the wound but decided it was just a little too big for the glue. At this point Ali still hasn’t cried or fussed really, even while we were holding gauss on the wound with some pressure. But, when the doctor and nurse started to do their thing she decided she didn’t like that. But who can blame her, she has a piece of paper over her face with a hole cut in the middle (like something you would find in a public restroom to put on the toilet seat), wrapped up like a mummy in a blanket, the nurse holding her head like a pumpkin in a vice and the doctor has a needle with thread attached practicing cross-stitch on her face. I think she was a trooper and handled it great. It was kind of hard to sit there and watch as a parent, I felt pretty bad for her lying there screaming with tears running down her face. But it had to be done and I am happy she came through it without too much trouble. By the time the doctor was leaving the room Ali was back to her normal smiling self. It is pretty amazing how quickly she can get over something like that. This evening you wouldn’t have had any idea how bad of a day she had if you couldn’t see her stitched right above her big round blue eyes.  See a couple of the pictures I took after we got home, does she look upset? The entire album can be viewed here.

I am not entirely sure why or if I should be, but I am proud of her.

Also if you have any fun stories feel free to share them below in the comments.