Friday, December 4, 2009

Putting #1 Back Together Again

Last night the #1 son came downstairs during the end of Survivor to torment me. Nothing like watching 99% of a show and then being distracted.

Feel my head.
Why? Do you have a fever?
No. Right here.
I don't want to feel that lump in your stitch area again.
Look. What do you see?
It looks like a scab.
No.
Yeah. Here, I'll get it.
See? It won't come off. It's not a scab.
Then what is it?
It's a piece of thread.
No. They took out your stitches.
The black ones. This is a white thread.

The boy was right. I could even see it from where he sat down on the couch. About 5 feet way, with bad lighting. It was at the top of the cut above his eye, where he bashed his face on the concrete-block wall during basketball practice. A little white thread was sticking out, about a half-inch long. Surely that was not normal. He split his head open three weeks ago. The stitches have been out for two weeks. Or so we thought.

"Since the swelling went down, it's been more noticeable. I thought it was a scab. But it wouldn't come off. It's that thread he used to sew me up."

That's what you get when you let the doctor's office bully you into taking an appointment with a nurse practitioner, because only the nurse practitioners remove stitches in this office. So I did what any normal mommy would have done, and called the ER that put in #1's stitches.

I brought my son there for stitches three weeks ago. The next week we had them taken out at his doctor's office by a nurse practitioner. She got all the black stitches, but now there's a white thread sticking out the top of his scar. What should we do about that? Cut it off? Leave it alone? Take him back to the doctor?
Oh. Let me ask the doctor.
Ma'am? Didn't the doctor do a double-layer repair? I think he did. He says that the white stitches will dissolve. Can you pull on it? Yank it out. Or just cut it off. The inside will dissolve.
Oh, I can't yank it out. But I'll tell him to try that. Thank you so much.

Hey, I'm off the phone. The doctor said to yank it out. Come here.
NO. You're not yanking it.
Or he said to cut it off. It won't hurt anything.
I'll do it.
Just yank it.
I'm going to look in the mirror.
Hey! It came out when I yanked really hard. Look at it.
Yeah. It's a white thread.
But it has red on it. Well, it used to be red. It's kind of brown now.
Whatever.
Hey, Pony! Wanna see my stitch?

Not really. The Pony doesn't get excited about much. But I'm certainly glad this latest crisis is over. Can't have my boy running around with a loose thread flopping over his eyebrow.

2 comments:

Kathy's Klothesline said...

So glad mine are grown....all that drama....

Hillbilly Mom said...

Kathy,
If it's not one thing it's another. Just when life is clicking along, one child or another breaks something or spills some blood.