In early September, Brian and I were unwinding by watching a little TV. It was just before 9 p.m., and Michael was supposed to be getting ready for bed. He came to downstairs going, "Mom and Dad, can you look at this?" He had a nasty cut on his knee that clearly needed stitches.
"What happened?" We asked.
"Well, earlier I was riding my bike and I fell on the cement," he responded.
"Why didn't you tell us sooner?" we asked.
"I don't know. I didn't think it was a big deal."
Thankfully, there was one urgent care still open in Provo, so Brian and Michael headed off in search of stitches.
While getting stitched up, the doctors and nurses kept asking how it happened, and apparently they gave strange looks when Michael answered. It was late; we didn't think too much of it.
The boys made it back to the house a little before midnight, and we all went to bed.
When Brian got back home, I asked if Michael had any more to add to the story. Something wasn't adding up. The cut was a perfect straight line, not the jagged cut one would expect from falling on cement.
My mind flew back to when I was about 10 or 11 on a camping trip with my family. We were sitting around the camp trying to whittle whistles out of willow branches. My grandma kept looking over at us nervously saying, "You kids be careful with those dull knives," and we'd respond, "Yeah, we're being careful Grandma." And after a couple of those exchanges, I missed my stick and cut my left hand, right on the knuckle of my pointer finger. I panicked, running through camp and across the dirt road to the stream. I remember watching my blood flow right into the water, and I knew I needed help, but I didn't want to get in trouble. I ran back to camp to the latrine and started wrapping toilet paper around my cut, and called frantically to Chelsea to help me. She took one look at my hand and marched me over to Grandma. I probably needed stitches, but we were so far away from medical care, that we gave bandaids and electrical tape a try (my dad had the first aid kit in the car, and he left camp that day to go to work and wouldn't be back until much later.) We kept changing out bandaids, and Mom and Grandma kept a close eye on the healing, but I spent the rest of camp needing to keep my hand out of the creek, and I have a scar to remind me of all those lessons learned that day that I look at everyday.
Visualizing what Michael's cut looked like and remembering that day when I was about Michael's age, I knew exactly what had happened, and I shared my suspicions with Brian.
The next day, while driving in the car, I had a conversation with Michael that went something like this,
"So, I don't think you fell and cut yourself. I was your age once, and I cut my hand pretty bad and was afraid that I'd get in trouble, so I tried to keep it from my Mom and Grandma. Here's what I think really happened: you were working on a project and cut yourself with a knife, and then you were afraid to tell us what really happened."
He confirmed that I was right, and I proceeded to tell him that his safety is more important than anything, and we all make mistakes. Next time, come tell us right away because we'd rather take care of it during the day than have to head to urgent care at bedtime. Brian and I laughed it off, and I was oddly grateful to have spent a little time remembering what it was like to be 11ish again.
Rachel's allergies were out of control (as were Gabe's) and after many over the counter treatments didn't seem to help her complaints from the effects thereof, I scheduled an appointment with the pediatrician to see what else we could do. Things reached a higher level of pain before we even made it to that point, and we went in to see him one day before that scheduled appointment. Dr. McCune said she probably had a sinus infection. When he looked inside her throat, he said, "Whoa! Did you see this?" I hadn't, and I felt so bad that she had these red painful looking sores in the back of her mouth.
I can't remember if he tested her for strep (I think he did and it came back negative). We got her on antibiotics and I felt so bad that she'd been fighting a sinus infection for who knows how long.
We decided to take Gabe in the next day as well, and guess what he had as well.
Dr. McCune said that the pollen levels were out of control this year.
Unfortunately, Gabe had a reaction to his medicine, breaking out in a nasty rash the next day.
It didn't seem to bother him, but we switched him to a different antibiotic and it went away.
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