A Little Bit of the Crazies of the Week

As I mentioned in the last post, this week has been a bit nutty. I have finally received permission to discuss with you the scene of our FHE this week, which, sadly has set the tone a bit for the whole week and its success thereof.

To set the stage:
Things were a "bit" crazy (as usual) Monday afternoon into evening as we battled the great homework battle and the eating-food-that-is-not-processed-and-might-contain-a- (horrors!)vegetable battle and hunkered down to prepare for the daily return of the daddy and to experience an actual family home evening lesson with all (or most) members present. Since M had skimped on her nap earlier in the day, upon DH's return, we made the executive decision for me to put her down while he supervised dinner clean up and then we would have FHE. While I was changing and nursing M, I began to hear suspicious sounds. These suspicious sounds erupted into actual screams of pain and trauma sufficient that I abandoned the "put the baby to bed" plan in favor of the "run down the stairs and see what on Earth is happening" plan.

What happened:
CE had been sweeping the kitchen floor and had somehow knocked over one of our kitchen benches. Onto her big toe. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And blood and hopping around the family room in pain, because CE didn't realize she was bleeding, only that she had hurt her toe and in a traditional toe-stubbing dance, she hopped all over the family room floor, leaving a trail of blood drops and spatters to memorialize the injury and the dance on the carpet. DH had halted the dance and moved her to the tiled floor with a cloth to apply direct pressure to the wound. She was very upset, to put it mildly. I set M down to play and began spot-cleaning the blood trail, thinking that CE was able to sit calmly and apply her direct pressure. Unfortunately, the pain, the blood and the fact that the integrity of her skin had been breached caused a great panic to well up in her and CE began to wail uncontrollably. So, I abandoned floor clean-up and began panic control and more detailed wound assessment. It was ugly. Since this is a G-rated blog, I will not post a picture. But the nail will most likely be lost. At the time, blood was oozing quite freely from beneath CE's toenail and it was slowly turning black and the toe was bruising and beginning to swell. I have never lost a toe nail, but my baby sister has lost several, so I called her in an attempt to distract CE with a conversation with beloved aunt BT. Perhaps that was a bad idea. CE first got to talk to her uncle Shawn, who has also lost a toenail and his "reassurances" that she would still be able to have a pretty toenail with polish and everything even if they had to "drill through the nail to release the pressure" somehow neither distracted nor soothed the maimed CE. BT tried to rehabilitate the conversation, but it didn't go all that well and was marred by more mayhem in the background, the noise of which was such that we had to cut the conversation short.
See, DH was trying to clean up the family room and maintain order with the rest of the family. Someone had crushed and spilled many crackers on the carpet, so DH was trying to vacuum. That may seem reasonable to you and I, but we are not Bam. Bam is apparently cultivating a fear of vacuums for his collection and this wasn't helping. Things were made worse by the fact that M was enchanted by the vacuum and was trying to pull at hoses and poke at things while DH vacuumed, thus leading Bam to scream "don't suck up my baby, don't suck up M" at the top of his lungs, easily audible over the sound of the vacuum.
So, vacuuming was curtailed, more direct pressure was applied and the toe was dressed and elevated. I put M to bed and we had a somewhat subdued, and whimpery (on the parts of CE) FHE.

Now several days later, we are still dressing and splinting the offending toe (in case it's sprained or broken and just because it seems to feel better when we do). CE no longer needs to sleep elevated and it is no longer oozing blood to the same degree (but only in the last day). But she can't wear actual shoes or walk without limping and it is almost certain that the toenail will eventually be lost since it is exceedingly black and ugly. And the boys have been interested in all the authorized use of bandaids, gauze, tape and other first aid supplies from which CE has benefitted. I'm so glad I actually squirrel the stuff away to keep it away from more recreational uses in the event of just such an actual need.

So, my question is, how long until the toenail actually goes? And is the unprotected skin impervious enough to withstand a coat or two of polish as a distracting measure? (once we actually get to that point, of course)