ANOTHER VISIT TO THE ER

If this isn't the picture of health, I don't know what is......


Alright, two ER visits for my family in one month does not make for a happy me. Eric has banned Taryn and himself from requiring a visit to the ER anytime in the near future, or anytime at all for that matter. Here's the deal: I got a phone call around 4 p.m. from Tanner's football trainer saying they had him in the locker room. He went on to tell me that Tanner had suffered a cut on his arm that they felt may require stitches and they were concerned about possible infection. Now, with all the talk about Staph lately I thought of that one myself. I told them I would be right there all the while completely composed and not wanting to overreact. Of course, after the call I put it in mommy gear and some tears fell on the way to pick him up from the school as I was thanking God that it was not a broken bone but still not knowing exactly how badly he was hurt. I wondered what the cut looked like, if he was in any sort of pain, whether he would he be able to play ball, if he needed stitches and how many, what will his arm look like when it heals and how bad the scar may be. I know, I know, relax....it's not a big deal.


Well, any mom knows what goes through your head when you find out that your child has been hurt and as I am finding out, it doesn't matter the child's age. On our way to pick him up from school my mind raced through all kinds of scenarios and my fear that he probably would be hurt at sometime during the season came to fruition, although I truly thought if he ever got hurt it would be during a game and not during practice. Tanner was waiting for us and we headed to the ER. Turns out he had quite a nice little laceration with all the goop hanging out of it. (Trust me, be glad I didn't get a close up of it because it was pretty disgusting.) Apparently he had a little altercation with a face mask, was hit on the forearm and ripped to shreds. I was so glad that they had put some Steri-Strips on it up at the school to keep it closed up so it would not continue bleeding, or at least keep it from bleeding so much. I actually didn't get too light-headed, as I usually do when it comes to blood and gore on myself or my kids, and I was able to watch as they stitched him up. Tanner is truly a great sport and always has been when it comes to pain. I think the kid has a high tolerance to pain, as I like to think I do (no, really I do!), but keep the needles away from me please. I think it's just the idea it's a needle that gets me. He watches everything that goes on, including the needles, not wincing once. As Tanner was being stitched up by Dr. Corcoran, he was on the phone with Trisha telling her what happened and what was going on as he was talking to her. I so could not have been that calm. We spent about 2 1/2 hours in the ER by the time we were discharged. Tanner will have to sit out of the next two games which he is completely bummed about. Taryn is just ticked she won't be going to the games because Tanner keeps telling us we don't need to go since he isn't playing. The team has dwindled down quite a bit and he has played quite a bit more in recent weeks so this is a huge downer for him. We were told the stitches could be removed in 10 days which puts it at next Friday. He'd be so happy if I told him we would remove the stitches on Thursday so he could play Thursday night but I'd probably not be able to live with myself if something happened to him while he was out there so to play it safe until his last game he is out and on the sidelines.
Now we just wait and see how it heals and what it will look like. It was really quite funny - as we were sitting in the ER waiting room Pastor Terri (she married Eric and I and is from our church) came in (probably visiting someone from the church in the hospital) and happened to see us. She came over and Tanner had to go through the whole story about how this all happened, which is actually quite funny the way he tells it, and she tells him it's nothing more than a chick magnet and he can basically embellish the story as he tells friends at school. You know that thing we all do in high school trying to be all big and tough! Eric and I had a good laugh at that one, though Tanner is the one with the last laugh. He told us that everyone, including a girl, that had already seen it had said it was really cool. I guess it comes with the territory and as he told me tonight when I said he was out for the next two weeks...."I've got three more years."