So I had a bad day.

Not as bad a day as Ethan-10yr. Not nearly that bad. But right now, he’s sleeping peacefully and I’ve self medicated with a six pack of diet coke and the only chocolate I could find by melting chocolate chips with which to encase pretzel sticks. No, I’ve never done that before. But I was desperate.  And now I’m desperate and jittery. Also, feeling kinda gross, and way over-caffeinated.

At 12:30, I was at a restaurant eating gluten free veggie pizza with a friend and we were getting blasted with odd surfer music that was drowning out the sound of my phone ringing. We were having a nice time. Lunch over, I glanced at my phone.  Texts and missed calls from everyone, including Mike (who is out of town) and the school nurse. I thought first of Caden-7yr and wondered if he’d hurt his nose. But it wasn’t Caden-7yr.

The nurse’s description didn’t really make sense to me. She said Ethan-10yr had fallen on the playground and gotten a splinter that was too large to remove without proper equipment and possibly some pain medication. And also, he couldn’t walk.

Hmm. That’s some serious splinter.

My friend followed as we sped to school. She is a Very Calm In Times of Trauma Sort. (I am too, but I don’t necessarily think clearly, and that is a key difference.)  By the time i got there, Ethan-10yr had been carried across campus by a teacher, hysterical, prayed over by various teachers, and withdrawn into a trembling silent mess in a wheelchair.

My baby did not have a splinter. He had a good sized piece of wood impaled in his kneecap. It went in at least a half inch, and was almost that wide as well.  There wasn’t a lot of blood, since there was a largish stick plugging the largish hole, and all.

Calm Friend is married to a pretty big guy who was willing to come carry Ethan-10yr to the car for us. This ended up not being necessary, but I was so grateful as it was just one less thing to worry about. And I pushed away the thought that my baby had gotten so big I couldn’t carry him myself anymore, and did I really notice when that happened? Did I acknowledge that at the time? Because I probably should have. And as long as I’m feeling guilty about the surfer music and the too quiet ringtone, maybe I should just be upset about that, too.

Calm Friend and I took Ethan-10yr to a clinic. Mike had arranged for Caden-7yr’s Nose Doctor to meet us, but we had a long wait. Ethan-10yr – normally hysterical and dramatic over nothing at all – was eerily silent. Only his mouth trembled. His little freckled face looked especially pale and he was clearly in a great deal of pain. They couldn’t give him anything for the pain until the Nose Doctor arrived. He asked for a book, and he disappeared into a dog story called Lad. It was a better place to be.

The nurse looked at the stick protruding from my baby’s knee  and dubiously said she thought they could take care of it there. She seemed to be warning me that we might end up at the emergency room, after all.   I couldn’t really think straight. But I hugged Ethan-10yr in his wheelchair and prayed right into his face and kissed his nose over and over. He was wide-eyed and silent. I tried to remember what I knew about symptoms of shock, but couldn’t recall anything helpful.

I asked my mom to come, in case Calm Friend needed a ride back to her car before she needed to pick up her own kids. My mother is NOT good with blood. I warned her not to look. She looked anyway. But there wasn’t as much blood as she expected, so she was perfectly, admirably fine.

When the Nose Doctor (who isn’t a Nose Doctor at all, except that he’s the guy who puts together Caden-7yr’s face every time he has a nose injury) arrived, I had assumed he’d give Ethan-10yr something for the pain. I leaned across Ethan-10yr’s chest and got nose to nose with him to hold him down and to somehow try to be in that moment with him and comfort him through the pain by literally smashing him with my maternal presence.  The Nose Doctor pulled on the piece of wood. Ethan-10yr opened his mouth to scream and my hair went straight down his throat.  My mom pulled it out. And this happened a few more times. For some reason there wasn’t any pain med injected before he yanked hard on the piece of wood. He did that AFTER,  before he put in a stitch to close the gaping hole.

I don’t understand that decision, but I didn’t get into it with him.

The Nose Doctor explained why a staph infection was a pretty big concern and gave me instructions for follow up appointments, exercise restrictions, icing protocol, stitch removal,  and antibiotic prescription to help with the imminent infection.

My mom took the prescription to the pharmacy, and Calm Friend and I got Ethan-10yr into the car.  (Sidenote: have a Calm Friend? Ohmygosh, GET ONE.) I picked up the other kids early and took them to my mom’s house, where Ethan-10yr promptly volunteered to go to bed. My mom came home with double chocolate ice cream bars and let Ethan-10yr eat TWO of them.

IN. HER. BED.

He was shocked.

I was more  shocked.

My mother didn’t let me eat anything double chocolate, anything ice cream, or anything in any bed at any time during all of my childhood.

I took the boys home, just as the adrenaline wore off and we all got very tired. The afternoon dragged on endlessly. Caden-7yr got his arm hopelessly stuck between his bed and the wall. I heard his muffled, panicked screams and I had to talk him into waiting a second and calming down long enough to tell me very clearly in which direction the bed needed to move in order to free him. I couldn’t see the arm and didn’t want to make it worse by guessing wrong.  He let out one big scream and then two big breaths and told me which way to go.  He crawled out, shaken and bruised and upset. I sat down to look at his hurt arm and burst into tears.

This injury wasn’t anything compared to a knee with a big stick coming out of it. But I couldn’t cry then, with Ethan-10yr and his knee. That wouldn’t have been helpful. But with another child in pain so soon there wasn’t any more holding back, regardless of how unhelpful those tears were. I tucked the boys into their beds early. Partly because they were tired, and partly because I thought this was the safest decision for everyone.

They all asked when Mike would come home. I told them all that he would be back tomorrow. But he won’t. I just got confused because today was so endless it seemed like at least 2 or 3 days and he really WOULD be back tomorrow.

Today is almost over.

I’m so glad.

It reminds me of a stage about halfway through labor in which the swirling hormones always made me sick. I’d ask Mike to stand next to me and hold a trash can and then I’d MISS the trashcan and get sick all over his stomach. He’d invariably be wearing a white t-shirt that he’d be unable to change out of for many hours. Like that moment, days like this are also an unglamorous, unavoidable, ugly part of motherhood. Memorable. But still like an unwanted, painful stain.

Be Sociable, Share!

•