9/21/09

The Big 6

(I didn't realize how much I would write about this.... but it's one of those stories I know he'll want to hear when he's bigger... I TOTALLY understand if you want to skip to the pictures!)

So this happened almost two months ago... but it's journal worthy for sure! Our home teacher's (2 men in our church that come and check on us each month) were at our house for the first time. The boys were playing "Ring around the rosies" (in which they just spin in circles by themselves over and over and over and over). They'd been entertaining themselves with this for quiet some time while we were all chatting. Owen got a little off kilter and fell and hit the TV stand on his way down. Trev picked him up and took him to the bathroom. He was crying, but not too hard, so I didn't worry much until Trevor said, "There's blood, come here." I came in and looked to see that his ear lobe was cut pretty bad. We tried to decide what to do. It was bed time, and it would take at least a half an hour to get to the emergency room. Trev's vote was to keep him home. When he was a kid he cut his ear and the couldn't do anything about it. It'd only been a couple minutes and he wasn't crying anymore. We put on a bandaid. Mom's intuition... take him in and if they send us home, so be it.

So to the ER Owen and I went. We had the normal long, long wait. Luckily Owen wasn't crying, and was content reading Dr. Suess, and once in the room telling me all the letters he could find in the magazines. The CPA came in to look at his ear, and it had appeared to have sealed up on it's own. Hmmm. Maybe Trevor was right. Owen asked me over and over if we could go in the bathroom so that he could look at his ear in the mirror. He was fascinated by it. We waited longer and then the doc came in, took half a glance at it, "This is definitely going to need stitches. We have a couple of choices, we can just hold him down and get it done, or we can sedate him." I told the doctor I'm good at holding down (Cameron needs it for a simple Dr.'s appointment) and I'd rather do that than have to put him under if not needed. The doctor was relieved knowing it would take much less time to do that.

So the doctor went out and we waited some more. I pulled the 'tool table' over and put paper towels on it for Owen to color. He drew two long lines and one little line (he called them 1's). He told me it was Mommy, Daddy, and Owen. I asked him where Cameron was. He told me he was sleeping at home (which was true). I quickly wrote that on the paper and he said, "Wait! Cameron needs a pillow!" So he drew a pillow under his name.

The CPA came back in to get everything ready for the stitches. Owen was intregied and had to know everything he was setting out. This nice, very young, CPA explained it all. "And this is to rinse it out..." Owen piped in, "Yeah, that one is brown soap." The doctor came in, calling in some assistants to help hold Owen down. All his limbs were being held tight while the doctor started giving shot after shot after shot to numb his ear. "Owen can you tell the doctor about when we went camping?" Owen continued to chat away about all the animals we saw when we went to Jackson (which I still haven't posted about). All the helpers let go and watched him hold so still while getting a needle in his ear repeatedly. The doctor left and CNA used this almost pressure washer thing to clean out the cut. It totally opened the would back up and lots of blood started coming out. Owen looked at me, "Ouch mom, that hurts." I know sweety, he's almost done. (Looking at it hurt, but he stayed, not moving.) He got done cleaning and had him hold a piece of gauze on it. He looked down and saw blood on his shirt. "Look mom! My ouch got on my shirt!"

Then time for the stitches. The doctor started using everything from the prep table. "Mom, the doctor's using the brown soap now." Then he started to get the 'fish hook' lookin' thing to put the stitches in. "What's that?" None of us held him down, he would hold still as long as we told him what the docotor was doing. The biggest problem we had was that he wanted to see everything. One stitch, two stitch, three. With each one he looked at me, "OUCH!" (the numbing hadn't set in yet) But not one movement out of this 2 year old. Finally after the 3rd he turned his head and cried. "Ouch doctor!" We waited for it to set in and then the doctor continued. Four, Five, Six. Looks like I was right after all.


We gave him some ibeprofen and he fell asleep on the way home. For the next five days we had to keep it moist with neosporin twice a day and he got to pick what color 'sticker' each time (luckily the dollar store had some fun colors!). Green seamed to be his favorite. (But he did get a chance to go through every color of the rainbow, more than once).Five days later we went back to the ER to get them out. He was so excited that Cameron got to come too. The nurse wasn't sure how he was going to respond. "He'll be totally fine if you explain what you're doing". So she showed him the sissors. "Swiper no swipping!" (From Dora) The nurse laughed (luckily had a young Dora lover as well) and continued to talk about Dora the whole time while cutting and pulling out each stitch. She asked me if we wanted to keep them, "Sure, I guess?" She put them all on a tongue stick with tape over them. We went to the store on the way home, and Owen was SO proud to show EVERYBODY his stitches (I'm so glad she let him keep them!)
He's healed great, a scar on his ear will probably always be there, but it's really small. He still loves to tell the story to everybody, and I will always be more than AMAZED at his threshold for pain and his high interest in the whole process. He makes me proud that I get to be his mom!

6 comments:

Jenni S said...

Wow, what a brave little boy. That is really amazing. Katelin would start screaming right when the doctor looked at her! She's better now though since I've let her know that he is very nice and now if anyone gets hurt, including her, she says "oh, go to doctors!" What a sweet little guy, I bet you were so proud of him!

Jancisco said...

when you are ready for him to start the med school process, we'll be happy to help!

What a strong little guy!

Audrey Seymour said...

That;s an awesome story! Well I guess it's sad too but wow he is so brave.

Trisha said...

He was so cute with that little bandaid on his ear!

Now what are you going to do with those stitches? I think that's great that you got to keep them!

The Clarks said...

Hey! I know this has nothing to do with your post but I was interested in finding out if you guys are still doing the pictures/movies onto dvd thing and if I can get more info. I have a bunch of old VHS family movies I want to put on dvd for my mom for Christmas. Anyway, call or email me when you have a second!

Chelsi Lasater said...

Awwww!!! What a cutie!! He's so brave!!