The day began with such promise. Cool temperatures accompanied by bright sunshine made for a lovely morning playground jaunt, which was much more entertaining than usual thanks to a good sized group of families from town meeting up. Everyone from babies to tweens graced the mulch that morning, since Spring Break caused me to not be the sole mom in town who desperately needed to see other grown-up faces. It was going along just fabulously, until Pudge asked me to watch him slide down his favorite, albeit somewhat steep and "bumpy" slide. In hindsight, I guess it's better that I actually saw what happened, so that I didn't have to wonder why he was screaming his head off a couple seconds later. But the downside to watching is that I now have the image of his foot getting stuck as he tried to sit down at the top, but instead barreled forward onto his face, which banged down several times until he did a complete somersault at the bottom and landed on his face in the mulch.
It's like an animated .gif that won't stop playing and replaying in my head ever since.
Thankfully, he didn't fall over the edge of the slide, which would have been a much scarier fall for his whole body's safety, but this way down wasn't too pretty either. He cried for a couple minutes, just out of fear, but then once he calmed down, he wanted to immediately go back to playing, which included more trips down the same slide. It was just an odd thing to happen, the way his shoe got stuck, so I warned him to be really careful about how to sit down at the top, and to do it a little further back than he had before... but I didn't stop him from returning to it, even if I wanted to wrap him in bubble wrap for the rest of the morning.
It took a while for my stomach to settle down after that, but soon enough we were back home so the kids could nap. JAM had a couple friends over, and when they all left to gallivant around town on their bikes, I was able to sit down and have a few quiet moments, something that I really have become accustomed to having during the little ones' nap time. My lazy gene kicked in, and I called hubby to inquire about the last time we all went out for dinner. We mutually agreed that it had been sufficiently long enough ago (as in a week since IHOP... woo!), that a dinner out that evening would be budgetarily acceptable. Since he needed to shop for some new sneakers, we opted to head out toward a shopping center with a couple options for him and eat at JAM's favorite chain restaurant.
The restaurant (which will go unnamed, except to say that it's name includes a day of the week, and it's not Ruby Tuesday's), isn't necessarily known for its fabulous cuisine, but we hoped that by not going to the one in our own town, we wouldn't suffer the fate of terrible service that we usually do. Eh, no such luck. Unfortunately, that meant that we weren't leaving the restaurant until almost 8 pm, but I pooh-poohed hubby's concerns that it was too late. It's spring break after all. The kids didn't have to be up early the next day, even though they inevitably still would be, and we had driven out there so he could shop in the first place. With that, we headed over to the first shopping area. He and the boys headed into Sports Authority in search of basketball sneakers, and Red and I went over to the Target next door so I could pick up some lotion. With our gender-specific-stereotypes in place, I hoped we would soon have our purchases in place, and we'd be home tucking the kids into bed in no time.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
When Red and I met back up with the boys, JAM suddenly looked down and said, "What's all over my hands?" Um, that looks like blood. "Did you hurt yourself when you fell?" hubby quickly responded, and suddenly our night went in a whole different direction. Apparently, someone had been playing around with some weight equipment that was set up and had fallen backwards off it. But when it happened, neither of them had realized he had cut himself, so they had moved on to other stuff, while blood trickled down the back of his head. I took him into the bathroom to wash up and check it out, and I was immediately grossed out by what appeared to be a small vertical cut on the back of his head.
While hubby and I were looking at it trying to determine if it merits a doctor visit, the two sales associates were trying to put all their ducks in a row, having us give our contact information and describe what happened, although there wasn't much in the way of details since neither of them knew what he hit his head on. We put an ice pack on there, and one of the sales associates said that she used to work in some medical environment and took a look. In a very blunt tone, she began to loudly declare that he most definitely needed stitches because you could see this or that, to which hubby quickly responded by asking her to tone it down a little since JAM's eyes now appeared to be ready to pop out of his head. Ah, standing in the front of the Sports Authority getting gory detailed medical advice from a stranger while trying to staunch the bleeding from the back of your son's head while he cries in fear... just the right way to finish off a day.
Except that we were nowhere close to being finished. The cashiers began to give us directions to a late night urgent care center, but hubby and I politely cut them off with a simultaneous, "Yeah, we know where that is."
Now is the part where I give some major kudos to the Bowie Health Center for their emergency services, because we were being seen within ten minutes of checking in. The folks that we saw were friendly and professional, although our Physician's Assistant's dry bedside manner didn't seem to include an understanding of the comorbidity of ADHD and anxiety. Oh, my poor son. I could feel his intense worry physically radiating from his body. For about an hour and a half, JAM and I sat in the back together as his cut was cleaned, discovered to be bigger and deeper than initially thought, numbed by cream, numbed even more by injections, and eventually partially closed by three staples.
Yes, my son has staples in his head.
When it was announced that staples would be the better option over stitches, I was certain he was going to have a full-blown panic attack. Honestly, my gut was churning, and I felt so utterly helpless as I watched his reaction. During the treatment time, we did a lot of waiting, and the only thing I could think to do was play upon my biggest talent- talking. I talked to keep him distracted in the hopes that he wouldn't spend the entire time stressing out. And with my own level of stress kind of high in the moment, I opted to tell stories that are so enmeshed in my brain that I didn't need to do much extra thinking-- classic family stories of days gone by.
I told the one about when my dad broke my grandma's toe after chasing her around the yard with a hose. (The description is intentionally inflammatory... don't worry, there was no premeditation.) I had to include the tales of playing Balderdash, quite possibly the coolest avid-reader's-favorite board game ever, with my wacky extended family, especially when Grandma (of the broken toe) would provide such detailed answers as "a plant" or "an animal." (The story is much, much funnier if you know how the game is played, trust me.) While he sat on the bed, head wrapped with gauze to hold the cottonball in place, I talked and he giggled, until the next step of the treatment would come. During those times, all I could do is hold his hand and tell him that it would be over soon. He's too old to try to calm with kisses and snuggles, but I tried to simply be close. In so many ways on most days, his ten years of age make him appear adolescent and jaded, but when in pain and scared, his ten years seemed just a blink of an eye.
I discovered that he and I have one thing in common, though, and that's an admirable amount of manners, even under such terrible circumstances. When the PA was finally ready to do the final act of putting in the staples, JAM's terror suddenly quadrupled, and all the calming and distracting efforts of the previous hour-plus were wiped away in an instant. He began to physically struggle, but stopped himself, thankfully. He did, however, begin a verbal repetition that hit close to home. He enthusiastically called out, "No thank you, I don't want this. No thank you! No thank you!" and I was immediately reminded of my own long labor with him almost eleven years earlier. After three exhausting hours of hard-core pushing, I was ready to give up and I clearly remember saying, "Can I just go home, please? Please, I'd really just like to leave." My twenty-four year old brain obviously knew that there was no going back at that point, but for whatever reason, I felt compelled to give the polite request a try. (Also, to my credit, for each f-bomb and other spicy word uttered during that long day and night, I do remember apologizing to the midwife and nurse in the room. Nice.)
Three clicks later, it was done. Once he was told that it was done and that he could sit back up, I could see the weight lift off him in his facial expression, his posture and his general demeanor. "I'm SO glad that's over now." Yes, that made two of us.
As we prepared to leave at 10:30 pm, I was pleased to find that Red and Pudge had held up pretty well with hubby in the waiting room. Many hugs were shared among siblings, and Red was sincerely compassionate and concerned for her big brother. Pudge gave a hug and was ready to go home... eh, he's a three year old boy. It was a relief to see that the whole ordeal didn't do a thing to JAM's sense of humor. He and I were looking over the discharge papers, and one line said to seek immediate medical care if he experienced confusion, dizziness or other abnormal behavior, to which he quickly mocked, "Um, I'm bringing my son back in because he cut his head and now he's acting good, which is abnormal for him." Funny guy. When I said goodnight to him once we got back home, he reached out for my hand, and in a serious tone said seven words that made my heart warm: "Thanks for being there for me, Mom."
Two days later now, "Staples" is doing just fine. He even listened to my reassurances that he could indeed take a shower today (please, please, please!!), so now he's on the road to recovery and, bonus, no longer stinky. He's bummed, though, that he's out of commission for baseball this week until he gets the staples removed on Friday.
Yes, that's right. We're not in the clear just yet, since he'll be sitting on another exam table in a few days, most likely getting anxious and worried all over again. I'm getting prepared though. Perhaps I should call my parents later this week to restock my family stories.
Hoping to have fulfilled our ER quota for the year,
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