Seven stitches

Today at football practice Keila (14), while deflecting a pass, had the ball hit his hand just right and split the webbing between two of his fingers. It bled immediately. The trainer let me know he would need stitches. We called Kelli, who took him to the doctor and sure enough he got seven stitches! The doctor also delivered the bad news – no football or firedancing for 10 days. That means he misses his first intersquad scrimmage, his first football game (against our rivals), his first JV football game (against our rivals), and no firedance, which he is supposed to do this Sunday (sorry Pat). Needless to say it was a tough blow for our son – but not nearly as tough as the last time we took him to the hospital.

Keila's hand - not for the squeamish!

Almost exactly three years ago, Jordan, Tana, Dani, Keila and Sina were home. Kelli and I were visiting some friends. When my phone rang and I saw it was my daughter Jordan, I certainly didn’t think anything unusual, she calls me all the time. But as soon as I said hello, I knew something was different. The tone of her voice was tense as she said, “Keila’s been cut and I’m going to call 9-1-1.” I immediately told her to calm down and tell me what happened. She explained that Sina and Keila were in the kitchen putting the dishes in the dishwasher when Keila slipped and fell. There was a 10 inch melon knife sticking up (yes moms we know that you aren’t supposed to have knives stick up and so did our kids!) and now his side was cut. As calmly as I could I asked if he was bleeding bad and if he was breathing ok. She said it bled right away but wasn’t too bad and his breathing seemed fine. I told her to wait just a minute and I’d call her right back. To make a long story short, we ended up meeting them half way and quickly ran Keila to the office of our pediatrician and friend, Dr. Clapper. We had called him to see if we could get right in – we figured a couple of stitches and he’d be fine. Dr. Clapper walked in, took one look and said, “This isn’t a cut, this is a stab wound. He needs to go to the hospital and I’d like him to go by ambulance.” After a quick argument, we ended up driving him to the hospital ourselves (10 minutes away) much to the chagrin of our doctor and the emergency room doctor. In the end, he never got those stitches. Instead we discovered the angels truly were watching over Keila that day. It was indeed a stab wound – Keila had fallen on the knife and the knife had traveled in and out a path that it couldn’t have done again. It missed puncturing his intestines and it pierced the spleen but missed the splenic artery by a fraction of an inch. That means we were lucky or blessed, depending on your theology. Had any of those things happened… well this story I’m telling you might have a very different ending.

                                  He's smiling now!

As it turned out, he came close, but avoided surgery. After his dose of morphine we watched the doctor push a q-tip into his side over four inches! The only time he shed a tear was when the doctor told him his football season that hadn’t even started was over. In fact he was on “no activity” for 3 months. The nurse told Kelli, we should write a book about raising kids based on how he acted in the hospital (he ended up spending two days in intensive care). We also heard the funny (at least now) story of how our age hierarchy sprung into action. When Keila first slipped and got stabbed (as opposed to cut) by the knife, the only one standing with him was Sina (at the time age 8). Well Sina took one look and yelled for her sister Dani (age 13) who was standing nearby. Dani ran in took one look and yelled for Tana (age 14). When Tana arrived he immediately sent Sina to get Jordan (age 17). And Jordan of course called mom and dad! All of that took less than thirty seconds, but what a fun illustration of the older siblings caring for the younger ones and the younger siblings looking up to their older brothers and sisters.

Thankfully, today’s accident isn’t nearly as serious and was never life threatening. Once again, Keila did great in the doctor’s office, a reminder to us about the importance of training self control into our children. We can’t control what happens to our kids, but we can train them to control their reaction to what happens. That’s what Titus 2 is talking about when it tells us to “similarly encourage our young men to be self-controlled.” I’m sure Paul would be ok with us expanding the target of this instruction to include young women.