Home Improvement Projects and ER visits

Steph and Lester had been working on a design for a pergola with Robb. When they got the design finalized it was time to make this happen. We went to Norfolk for the weekend to get a really good start on it. Lester had a couple of other people helping and Bryce and Caleb helped some too. Like any project it took longer than they thought but after a weekend of 15+ hour days the pergola was done and ready for Steph's decorating touches to make it look homey. Just like all home projects, it never goes as quick as you thought. Most home improvement projects also involve someone hurting themselves somehow. This time it was Caleb. He was putting a 4x4 through the saw when he got what you would typically say was a sliver in the underside of his wrist. The only thing was that this thing was no little silver, it was more like a hunk of wood stuck in his wrist. We went inside and cleaned it up and attempted to remove it with every type of tweezers Steph had on hand. I was digging fairly deep and was making no progress. Robb tried, my dad tried and even Caleb tried. We had no luck so Caleb and I headed to Urgent Care for what we thought would be a quick injection of numbing so they could get deep enough to remove this thing. Nothing is ever as easy as it seems, the PA wouldn't even attempt to remove it and said he needed to see the hand surgeon on Monday. Both Caleb and I thought this was a little extreme and we had no intention on staying in Norfolk until Monday. We left it alone for the night and decided we would see how it looked in the morning. Caleb woke up to a sore, swollen and red hand. Him and I headed back to Lincoln and went to the ER there to get it removed. The doctor we saw there was older and more experienced, and he was totally fine with numbing it and then making a fairly deep cut to get the thing out. He also gave Caleb antibiotics for any potential infection. It really should have ended there but as the week went on Caleb had red streaks going up his arm and a big knot at the site. I thought maybe there was still more wood stuck in there deeper. The pediatrician started him on stronger antibiotics, and we made an appt for the Lincoln hand surgeon to see him. It all turned out ok, but it was a lot for a stupid sliver. Poor Caleb!