I think every family has one kid who is accident prone. If anything is going to happen to someone in the family, it’s going to be that one. It’s kind of a rule. Judah’s that one.
Judah’s been to the ER the most times, mostly for croup when he was younger, but we ended up there again when he was three years old after he cut open his eyebrow falling on a chair leg.
Last Wednesday he grabbed something out of Josie’s hands, which she clearly did not appreciate, and showed him just that by smacking him with an umbrella. I knew it was bad by his scream. Moms know. We know the difference between the cry saying I stubbed my toe and the cry saying I think my eyeball might have popped out of my socket. This one was definitely leaning toward the eyeball situation.
His eyelid was cut just under the scar where his previous stitches were. The mere mention of the possibility of stitches sent him into even more of a frenzy. The cut was deep, but pretty small, so I opted to do my best patch-up job with a butterfly bandage. Good enough. He went to gymnastics the next day and when everyone asked him what happened to his eye, instead of relaying a great fight story, he just said, “my little sister hit me with an umbrella.” Ouch.
Saturday was sunny and hot causing the kids to run around barefoot. Judah shrieked once again. This time he threw himself on the ground, rolling around like he was on fire. Bee sting to the foot. Once he calmed down and we iced it, he decided he could handle riding his bike with everyone to 7-11.
The boys took a detour to have a quick bike race around the church parking lot down the street. I noticed Judah was really leaning into his turns. As he increased in speed, I had a bad feeling. Just as I opened my mouth to warn him, the skidding began. I believe motorcyclists refer to this as “laying your bike down”. That’s exactly what he did, except because of his speed, he skidded along the pavement under his bike. It was not pretty.
I was prepared to have to carry him home, but he brushed his bloodied self off and decided a treat at 7-11 was important enough to keep going. He’s tough, that way.
Later, when I was cleaning all his wounds, he told me his foot hurt where he got stung by the bee. I took off his shoe and sock to find a swollen, reddish-purple, hot-to-the-touch foot. It looked nasty. I was a little worried about an allergic reaction after seeing that, but since he was still swallowing normal and breathing okay, I gave him a dose of Benadryl and called it a day. That darn bee sting kept him from walking normally all day Sunday and the swelling didn’t go away until Monday.
Things seemed to calm down, for Monday at least.
But on Tuesday, while Andy was running an errand and I was picking up someone from the airport, I got the call from Charlie. “Judah was running in the house and he slipped and hit his mouth on the corner of the couch. He cut his cheek and it looks pretty deep, like he might need stitches. There was a lot of blood, but don’t worry, we cleaned it all up.” (He knows me well enough to know that this is important, even in a catastrophy).
“I’m sure he’s going to be fine. Just hold pressure on it until Dad or I get home.” Little did I know it would take me another hour and a half before I made it back home. When I walked in, Judah was running around like normal, but after one look, I knew Charlie was right. It would need stitches.
Two hours and who know how many hundreds of dollars later, Judah had a couple of stitches. When the ER doctor asked what happened to him, he replied with, “well, I’ve had several things happen to me…” At least it was on the opposite side of his face from where his scraped up nose was. Evens things out a little.
That night ended with Judah showing me his tooth that fell out. He had knocked it loose in his cheek injury. Go figure.
I about had a heart attack yesterday when I walked into the room to find that Judah had pushed two chairs together, hands placed on the arm rests, and was swinging back and forth as if they were parallel bars. “Judah! I can’t even believe you are doing that after all the accidents you’ve had!” I said, in disbelief.
No. Just stop. No more. Please, no more.
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| After injury number one |
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| Four incidents later |
