Thursday I got a call from my wife around 11 and when I answered the phone all I heard was Joshua (my 2 year old son) screaming bloody murder in the background. My wife went on to tell me that he had stuck his hand on the glass shield of the fireplace and had burned it really bad. Since she is a nurse by the time I got home it was wrapped and ready to go to the hospital so we loaded up and I had to hold Joshua in the front seat because of how bad he was squirming around due to pain.
It was seriously the first time in my life where my body physically hurt for the pain felt by someone else. I would have done anything to take it away and it just really broke my heart to see him like that. The doctor took a look and it was the first time I had seen it. It was bad. The skin was all gone from the center and the muscle was exposed and everything esle was a mix of burnt blisters. The doctor said that since it was the palm side he would hope that a skin graph wouldn’t be necessary but we will have to take him back in a few days and see. That was day one.
Friday We hired out a high school boy to dig out our window wells. Since we build our hose we have had constant basement flooding due to a poor job on getting our rain water deterred away from the house. Because of this our window wells have filled up with dirt/dibree/spiders and about anything else you could imagine. We had him dig down to the footings of the basement so in total our window wells are holes that are about 7-8 foot deep. While we were out working in the yard I heard Joshua crying, I couldn’t see him and starting to look around the house. He had fallen into one of the freshly dug window wells and was standing in one with his arms up for someone to get him out. How he didn’t break his neck or arm, or foot, or cranium I will never know. He didn’t even have a scrape. But considering all he had been through the day before I was starting to think this just wasn’t his week.
Saturday Inside cleaning. Due to everything that Joshua had been through my wife had him on a steady dose of ibuprofen for his burn pain. It’s the yummy kid stuff that tastes like bubble gum and he is a fan. Somehow, while we were cleaning up the house getting ready for a BBQ he found a stool, got up on the counter and found the bottle of medicine that didn’t have the cap screwed on all the way. He drank it like a bottle and left it on the counter. I was upstairs and he came up and kept saying he was thristy and started to layout and giggle. Then i heard Hillary shout that he had drank the medicine and she needed to call poision control. He had slammed down enough to make him all sorts of loopy but just shy of the dosage that would have sent us to the hospital for him to get flushed out.
So, 3 days and 3 accidents. All I can say is each one could have been a lot worse. Instead of a hand it could have been a face, or a back. Instead of tears I could have found my boy unconscious or worse at the bottom of the window well. Instead of giggles I could have found his system in shock from an overdose of medicine. But, in each case he came out pretty alright.
In a world where invincibility seems to be the new perception, I have been reminded just how fragile life is. I am grateful for that.