Tough Licks

My son decided to start his extreme sports career last night by riding my friend’s daughter’s scooter down a steep driveway, only to crash at the bottom and impale the handlebar into his chin. Fortunately the daughter was nearby and did the right thing by walking him out of the road and running to get me. When I heard, I initially thought ok, no big deal, small scraps and tears. However walking around the corner of the house I see my son crying with blood running from his chin, small pool of blood at his feet. This was no normal tumble, this is going to require a trip to the hospital for stitches. I pulled my shirt off, wrapped it around his chin, and walked him up to the house. We put ice into a cold pack, put it on his chin, carefully walked him to the car, and drove off to the hospital. An hour later my son was all stitched back together, and a lot happier. I’m sure he’ll think twice before pulling anymore scooter stunts. We made sure to get him ice cream on the way home. I took some before & after pictures of the wound, for historical sake.

Warning the following pics are a bit gory: Before & After.

However this brings up a parenting issue I’ve been struggling with for a while. How much do you worry over your kids, and when do you just let them injure themselves so they’ll learn. Everyone is so over protective of kids these days. Obviously times have changed, it’s a miracle I survived as a child. When I was little, I didn’t have a car seat with cup holders and video games, I had an upside down 5-gallon bucket in the back of my Dad’s work van, sitting in between 1/2 ton weight machinery that could crush me in a sec if we had to stop too fast. I got to play with power tools, hatchets, dirt bikes, etc when I was definitely not old enough or parentally supervised enough. And today I worry, stress, and over parent if my son climbs a tree. Of course I blame most of my son’s woosiness on his mother, she coddles and spoon feeds him constantly, and there is only so much control I have during the 50% of the time he’s with me. But I’m too blame also, because I haven’t done much to rectify the situation. This has become an issue constantly on my mind, and I have tried to just let go. Let him go be a kid, get hurt, take his licks and learn from them. This recent injury is proof of that, of course right afterwards I went right into over protective mode. Where was I? Who gave him the scooter? Why wasn’t another parent watching? Etc etc etc. I have to admit it’s hard, but it’s important my son become self reliant, and learn from his mistakes. I’m not always going to be around. So hopefully after this event he learned that scooters can be dangerous, and maybe he shouldn’t roll full bore down a steep driveway? Time will tell.

Dental Surgery

Today was the most stressful/emotional day as a parent I've ever had. We found out a few months back that Logan has a lot cavities. This is a culmination of Logan having weak teeth that are highly susceptible to cavities and his mother and her family giving him too many sweets. So instead of putting Logan through the stress of multiple dental appointments to fix the cavities under local anesthetic (Novocain), we opted to have them all fixed at once under general anesthesia at the hospital. I've never had surgery myself or seen the direct effects of someone who has. So I had no idea what it would be like. I just assumed that it would be an easy process of putting Logan to sleep, and when it was all over he'd wake up just as normal as before the procedure (maybe a little sore or confused).

However it was completely different. We went into the hospital at 7am, checked in, and were admitted to a pre-surgery room. We talked with a few nurses, the anesthesiologist, and our dentist before hand. With each conversation we were getting more concerned. There was talk about having to insert a breathing tube into his throat via his nostril, he would throw up some blood, and that he would be dazed and confused for the remainder of the day. Then came time to give Logan some calm nerving medicine. I knew it was going to be hard to get him to drink it because it's nearly impossible to get him to take any medicine that tastes bad, especially without any water (he had to have an empty stomach). He drank half of it, but we ended up having to force feed the last bit. He was extremely mad at us, but that soon faded as the medicine induces a drunk like state. This is to calm his nerves before surgery so he's okay with leaving us. I must admit it was pretty comical to see him in this state. He acted like a real drunk, slurring his words, making jokes and funny voices, etc. He had all of us in tears of laughter. Pretty soon we laid him down on the bed by himself as he was getting pretty sleepy. Soon they took him off to surgery, we were all pretty emotional seeing him wheeled away.

We were told the procedure would take some time, approx 30 mins for the anesthesiologist before and 30 mins after, with the dental work taking approx 2-3 hrs. We waiting impatiently in the surgery waiting room which seemed like forever. I must have checked my cell phone clock a million times. Four hours later we got to see him in a recovery room. It was very emotional to see Logan lying there all wired up (heart monitor clip on one hard, IV in the other, and an oxygen mask on). He was sleeping off the drugs, snoring loudly. We looked him over making sure he was okay. We noticing his lips were swollen from all the dental work and local anesthetic, and nose a little bloody from the breath tube. It was hard to see him like this, especially when he woke up crying due to being very confused and feeling sick. He threw up a couple times (a little bit of blood that he swallowed during the procedure). He'd wake up for a couple mins and then pass out again. The nurse explained it was normal as he was wearing out the drugs. Eventually he became more alert and was able to drink some water. We waiting a while till he was more conscious and then got him dressed and went home. He slept on the ride home and about another hour when we got there. Eventually he woke up and we were able to feed him some soft foods like pudding, yogurt, and ice cream. And soon he was back to his old self.

Needless to say I don't ever want to go through this again. It was very hard to do, for everyone involved. So we'll have to make sure to keep on top of his sweet intake and dental care.

Death

The last couple weeks have been pretty hard on my family. On January 21st my Step-Uncle John Hill died unexpectedly from heart failure. This was after he was life flighted from McMinnville, OR to Providence Medical Center in Portland, OR the day before after a heart attack and an emergency double bypass open heart operation. While I wasn't really close to John I am very close with my aunt Ann (his wife) and my cousins Heath and Angela (Ann's children). As most of you know Heath and I are very close, almost like brothers at times. It's been very emotionally draining for them as a family, and I'm trying my best to be there for them. John's funeral services were held on January 27th @ Skyline Cemetery.

If that wasn't enough, my girl-friend Darci's grandfather Tom Hayes passed away on February 2nd. We got a frantic call that night from her sister Amber who had found him dead and tried everything in her power to rescue him. We drove down to Salem, OR immediately to be there with our family. The situation was emotional enough, but we had to wait for two hours before the coroner showed up to retrieve the body. It's very emotional for the family, especially Amber as she grew up living with her Grandpa. Tom's funeral services were held on February 7th @ City View Cemetery.

On top of all that I've had to address and explain the issue of death to my son. I brought him along to both funeral services as I believe it's time he learns about all of this. Naturally he had lots of questions and concerns. I didn't know exactly how to go about explaining it all to him, especially since he's being raised in a split religion house hold. His grandma has already explained Heaven to Logan when their cat died. And while my beliefs don't exactly agree with traditional Christian beliefs of heaven, I chose not to confuse Logan with religious doctrine and to just use the generic heaven answer. He seemed to understand most of what I said, but had a hard time understanding how death effects the body.

At the second funeral he was more curious to see the actual corpse in the casket. I let him make the decision if he wanted to or not, and after 45 min at the viewing he decided he did want to see. I didn't bring him too close about 15 feet away and he sort of peeked a few times. He didn't understand that the man was dead, and that meant he wasn't going to move, breath, or even think. I tried to explain the principals of a soul & body to him. A soul being the voice in his head that he talks to himself with, like when he's thinking of what to say, or when he's looking at a picture. I could tell in the end that he was getting it, but still had some confusion. From some reading I've done this is normal for his age, and he won't fully understand death as a permanent state until he's a bit older. For now I left the topic be, and will likely have to talk with him more down the road. Anyone else go through this recently?