Just when I feel like I'm getting caught up on life, intense things seem to happen that throw off my game again.
Despite this, I'm trying very hard to hold onto hope and optimism. There are so many reason to be grateful ~ even at the worst of times.
This week since my son got injured on Monday I have forced myself to look for the good things.
I've noticed that we still have a blue sky and sunny weather. We Californians are very lucky to be escaping the terrible heat wave gripping much of the rest of the country.
Other things I have noticed, for which I am grateful, include:
- Our family has health insurance, SO significant at a time when thousands of dollars of doctor bills are being rapidly accrued
- We live in a first world nation with world class emergency medicine
- Our family has a roof over our head, healthy food to eat, money for antibiotics
- My other two children do not have any injuries... although one may have a walking pneumonia, again
- My husband has kindly taken much time off of work this week to help out covering child duty as I ferry our son to doctors appointments
- My incredible mother and siblings have been checking on us consistently, and praying for my boy, for which I am SO appreciative
- So many of our friends have been loving, concerned, supportive and THERE for us during this tough time
- The rest of the world seems to be continuing forward peacefully enough - at least we're not dealing with a family emergency in the middle of a local or national emergency
Clearly, there are a lot of good things happening.
It's just been harder than usual to think of them; but I have hope that as more days pass, my inner joy and optimism are going to make a fantastic rebound.
* * * * * * *
Today I drove our little son to his "wound check" appointment at the children's hospital orthopedic clinic.
The ER doctors had made it sound like this appointment was going to be a walk in the park.
"They'll just check for infection and maybe remove the splint at that time," explained the ER physician. "After that point you'll want to keep his fingers clean and dry, wash the wound only with soap and water and use a topical antibiotic cream if you feel you must."
This is what we came in expecting today. In retrospect, perhaps I was a little bit *too* relaxed or nonchalant about the whole appointment.
"This will be a piece of cake," I'd assured my son.
Unfortunately it didn't quite pan out that way.
We weren't able to make an appointment in the hospital's private clinic at such short notice so the ortho center we were directed to was quite a bit run down. Which is fine, I don't need to dwell on shabby furniture. Heck, our house isn't much better!
No, the conditions of the clinic weren't what surprised me.
My first surprise today, the one that set my heart racing, was the fact that my son's thumb had actually doubled in size. His thumb is one of the "good" fingers - not broken or cut. It hasn't been splinted or bandaged at all.
So when I sat next to him waiting and looked at his hand and realized how swollen his thumb had become, I started to feel a little nauseated.
"How does it feel?" I asked him.
"A little bit tight, Mommy."
"Okay." I took a deep breath. "I'm sure it will be fine, and at least we're here at the right place to take care of anything that we could need."
We started to play tic-tac-toe in my daily planner; having forgotten to bring any toys or books for the appointment.
Then I noticed that his arm, above the tightly bandaged splint, was also swollen.
Another deep breath. "I'm glad you don't have a fever, honey," I smiled. "That is a great thing."
I began to pray silently that the doctor would come a little faster to our room, to unwrap his arm so that we could see if he actually had an infection.
Then, realizing that my thoughts were totally out of balance and fearful, I tried a redirect.
"Have I told you about the day when you were born?" I asked my son.
Even though he has heard the story many times, he smiled and shook his head. "Tell me!"
So for the next ten minutes I told him the story of his birth... how happy we were when he came into the world, what a beautiful day it was, how he smiled when he was born.
At last, after what seemed like HOURS the attending physician at the clinic came in to check my son. This was a nice surprise - we'd been told to expect a nurse practitioner but for whatever lucky reason, we got a full doctor instead.
The doctor, who I'll call Jamison* for the purposes of this blog, was a kind looking man not much older than I am... possibly around 40? with a very calming manner. He was very good with my son, and disclosed in our conversation that he is the father of a two year old... so he really understood the mentality of where we were at - a newish mother with her young child. Nervy. Trying to stay calm.
Dr. Jamison carefully unwrapped my son's bandage and splint, and commented that it had been bandaged much too tightly. "That accounts for most of the extra swelling you are seeing," he said.
He then examined the fingers in front of us. My little boy stared with great concern at his hand, which turned out to have a good bit of dried blood on the bandage and also some very intense looking stitches. The fingers themselves looked pretty banged up, bruised and puffy.
"Infection?" I asked.
"No obvious infection as of now," he said. "I think the antibiotics are doing their job."
I exhaled, deeply.
A little too soon though, because there was more coming.
"So, despite the best intentions of the ER, it's really way too soon for us to assess the scope of your son's injury. Making an appointment two days after the accident isn't going to give us any kind of sense of how his healing process is going to go. What I suggest to all patients in this situation is a cast. We don't even want to look at this hand again for two weeks."
"Really?"
"Take your son's temperature frequently, and beware of chills, if he complains of great pain, or fever above 102 degrees. If those things happen, bring him back to the ER immediately. I don't expect those things to happen though, in which case we'd like to see you in two weeks. We'll take off the cast then, and get a sense of what is going to happen with his skin. We'll know then if he needs more surgery."
"What? More surgery?"
"Yes." He then went into detail about the type of injury my son has, and how sometimes the skin does not heal up or grow back correctly.
"You need to know that due to the type of fracture he has on his index finger, the skin may not heal. It may turn black and need to be cut off. Usually then there is a fresh new skin underneath. The human body in children this age is much like a starfish - your son can regenerate the tissue of his own finger."
"Wow. Okay." Just the idea of my son having to (a) tough out another surgery, and (b) losing the skin on the top of his finger(s) to tissue necrosis, made me feel physically ill. (In fact, just typing these words has made me feel nauseated again.)
In the clinic I kissed my son, who was seated on my lap, on the head.
"No swimming lessons then, I take it?"
"Not for two to three weeks, at a minimum."
I squeezed my boy around the tummy, knowing how disappointed he must feel. Swimming lessons have been his joy this summer. Sad.
"So," continued Dr. Jamison, "It's time to go get a cast picked out. You can pick out any color you like," he told my son... who chose green.
In a few minutes we were joined by a male technician in scrubs who took us back to a long dark room filled with hospital beds. Beckoning us to the second bed, he invited us to sit on it as he prepared to cast my son's arm.
In the bed in front of us, another girl in her teens was having a cast on her leg removed. This must have frightened my son, because suddenly I noticed that he was trembling.
"Are you okay, buddy?"
He tucked his head into the crook of my arm.
"Are you scared?"
He nodded.
"Everything is fine, honey. This part isn't going to hurt at all."
At the time I felt surprised by the fact that my son was more frightened by the casting experience than he was of the surgery. In retrospect, I can see that the environment made a big difference to him. His ER experience was full of comforting women in a brightly lit room with cartoons.
The orthopedic clinic was dark and dingy, with a male doctor and male technician... no cartoons, and some scary looking machines. Not to mention, the tech explained to us that they would have to use a saw to cut off the cast in two weeks. My son began to shake again. Bless his heart though, he never even whimpered.
Casting went pretty well, and the tech commented that my son's fingers looked like they were going to be okay. "I get worried if I see that they are white or blue," he said. "This hand looks good."
He was very gentle with my little boy, and in pretty short order he'd created a very professional looking green cast which fit my son's hand much more comfortably. He is thrilled that he can now wiggle his fingers a tiny bit. The tech also kindly let us know that if it gets itchy we can blow air down it with a hair dryer.
As we left the clinic, they offered my son his choice of small stuffed animals. To his delight, even though he isn't a huge stuffed animal type of guy, they had a really cool stuffed snake. "LOOK MOMMY!" he beamed.
I smiled as genuinely as I could, and carefully led my green armed child into the waiting room. It was time to set up our followup appointment. This involved some diplomatic wrangling, as I politely (and later, firmly) requested for my son to see a doctor and not a nurse-practitioner when he returned. I also requested the private clinic, given that we pay plenty for the privilege of good health insurance.
Honestly, I'm not the most popular person around hospitals these days. (I know what I feel comfortable with, and don't back down.)
Finally we left the building - me, my four year old superhero and a brightly colored velveteen snake.
* * * * * * *
As we drove away from the hospital, I felt suddenly overwhelmed. A leaden, sinking stomach.
Tissue necrosis. Tissue necrosis? Really?
Surgery. More surgery? Really?
Just when I thought things were on their way back to normal. "He was just telling me about possibilities... those things don't have to happen," I consoled myself - and then tried once more to reboot my thoughts to the positive.
"Look at that airplane!" I said to my son, and tried to imagine him flying a plane someday (as he dreams of doing) with all of his fingers fully intact.
"Mommy, I love you."
"Oh little man, I love you too. So much."
We were both exhausted though - he physically, and me mentally. We drove the rest of the way home in silence. At some point I glanced back and realized that he had fallen sound asleep sitting up in the booster seat, his head nodding on the seat belt.
Lost in thought and worry, I pushed onward.
Suddenly, without warning, I heard a loud and angry horn behind the car. This surprised me as we were on a freeway at the time. Then, a large car with a peace sign, yellow ribbon and breast cancer awareness sticker went whizzing by us. The driver stuck his hand out the window and flipped me off, before racing away.
"What was that!?"
After the afternoon we'd had, I felt oddly more shaken by this random occurrence than anything else. It seemed like one more painful reminder that just when you're heading down a path minding your own business, Life can throw you a big middle finger. At least, that's how it felt.
Honestly, that is how this entire week has felt to me.
Briefly I wondered what I had done to incur the wrath of that driver. My best guess is that I was going 60mph in a 65mph zone where most other drivers were probably going 70mph. I was so lost in thought that I drove under the speed limit instead of going with traffic.
So there you have it: Insult was added to injury.
My takeaway from this little incident is to try to be even more patient with strangers and people I encounter throughout my day, remembering that you can never know what someone else is going through.
Even though that guy was pretty crude, I'm willing to bet that if he had known that he was telling an exhausted, broken down mother with an injured small child to "F$&% off!" he might have reconsidered his actions.
So it makes me want to be especially good to others, even if they are bitter or rude... or perchance driving too slowly. Because you just never know what another person may be struggling through.
I wish I could sign this post off with something really inspiring, something wonderful.
All I can say is, I'm praying for that moment of clarity tonight. I'm so hopeful that tomorrow will bring something beautiful and inspiring with it, something that will give me strength and faith to keep going as the force holding everything together. After all, that's part of my job description. I'm their Mommy. I'm supposed to be able to fix everything.
I pray that tomorrow I will come closer to living up to the woman and mother I most wish to be.
*Name changed to protect the privacy of the party in question
No comments:
Post a Comment