Close Call

We had a close call last night while we were over at the house of some friends from church. We were actually just getting ready to leave when I heard a thump and sudden wailing from the basement where the kids were playing.

It was one of those weird surreal experiences where you hear distant crying and (a) somehow instinctively you KNOW that it's YOUR child crying and (b) it's got some sort of special enciphered child-to-parent data link that mysteriously transmits the message, "Holy CRAP that hurt so bad I might have broken something!"

I ran down the stairs to the basement to find YB laying on the floor at the bottom of the basement stairs with a LOT of bright red blood in his mouth, covering his chin, on his shirt, and on the carpet. In my mind, I said to myself, "ohshitohshitohshitohshit PLEASE Lord let him be okay," and started planning the route to the nearest emergency room in my head.

After we got a wet paper towel and cleaned up most of the blood around his mouth, we found the source of the blood was a busted lower lip. It wasn't bad enough to warrant stitches, but it sure bled a lot. We got him calmed down and cleaned up and had him hold an ice pack on it for a while. Today he's sportin' a swollen fat lip.

Warning: Tangent Ahead.

As we were standing there at the sink cleaning him up, I had a flashback to our last trip to the emergency room. It was during our previous shore duty tour here in the DC area. It was for the same son, only he was like 2 years old then. For some reason I can't recall, I didn't have my cell phone that day. As I drove down the street toward my house that afternoon, I said to myself, "Self, that's odd... your lovely wife's car is NOT in the driveway. I wonder where she went." I pulled into the driveway and noticed a colorful sticky note on the front door. The sticky note was left by my wife informing me that she was on her way to the emergency room with my son.

Why, you ask?

He stuck a raisin up his nose.

I mean, REALLY far up his nose.

I met my wife and the boys at the emergency room where we waited for thirty minutes to see a doctor. When we finally saw the doc, I was almost embarrassed at how shockingly simple and easy the solution was.

The doc looked up YB's nose and said, "Yep! There's a raisin up there alright. Okay, Dad, you're gonna give your son a little mouth to mouth." He proceeded to explain to me the procedure and we got to work. It went like this:

Step 1. Doc pushed YB's right nostril shut.

Step 2. Daddy (me) bent over YB laying on the table like I was going to give YB a kiss, but blew into his mouth.

Step 3. One slimy, snot-covered raisin BLASTED forth from YB's left nostril with the muzzle velocity of a howitzer.

I bet it would have been neat to watch an instant-replay in slow motion. The raisin impacted my right cheek, sending rippling shock waves across my face as it ricocheted into a high parabolic arc across the emergency room and landed about 20 feet across the room.

The doc said this technique will work for SMOOTH objects (like raisins).

Oh, and he very specifically noted that this technique will NOT work for Barbie shoes.

Um... Ow. That makes my nose hurt just thinking of it.

End of Tangent.

I wish you all a SAFE and happy holiday season. Oh, and for a good laugh and some other pointers on SAFE holiday activities, check out this Broadside Blog post.