A Three-Year-Old’s Injury Turns Into a Positive ER Experience
September 8, 2022
It was the evening before Father’s Day, and the Fetterman Family of Lakewood Ranch was finishing up a family dinner. Three-year-old Jaysen (Jay) was in his Spiderman pajamas running around, when the family heard a thump. Mom Melissa found him on the floor with a bleeding gash in his lip. “I told my husband that we should get it looked at,” said Melissa. “It’s 7:30 p.m. on Saturday night and we talked about where we were going to go, and I knew right where – the ER at Fruitville, right around the corner from our house. We loaded Jay in the car and went to the ER. We walked in and said we wanted Jay to be looked at and off we went.”
The ER at Fruitville Experience
They took the Fettermans right away and by this time, Jay had calmed down. The person who took them back commented on his Spiderman pajamas. As Jay’s vitals were being checked, she came back in with an old Spiderman show on her phone. This intrigued Jay since this was the older Spider-Man version from the ‘70s. “It was so cute and just such a nice thing for her to do, and he was kind of entranced because this was a new Spiderman,” explained Melissa. Melissa commented that Dr. Howren came in and had a very warm and calm demeanor. “He walked in and looked at Jay’s lip and said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s going to need stitches,’ so it was decided. It did not take long for the staff to come in and numb the lip and stitch him up. The phone with some cartoons distracted him. I appreciated how the staff was with me too. It was very quick, very fast – dissolvable stitches.”
Jay healed well and by all intents and purposes, it was a positive experience for him. “If we had to take him back to the ER, I don’t think he would worry about it," added Melissa. The Fettermans would recommend the ER at Fruitville to others because there’s hardly any wait, they're really good at what they do and they’re really great people.
This emergency department is part of Lakewood Ranch Medical Center. This is not an urgent care center. Its services and care are billed at hospital emergency department rates.