Boys and their bikes

So, Saturday was great.  Right up until THIS happened.

 

Now, you might be saying to yourself, 'That doesn't look so bad.'  But TRUST me, it was.  This pretty pic was snapped about 2 hours post-trauma, after much ice, a tepid bath, and half a popsicle.  Here's a quick breakdown.

1. Make sure mom is inside making dinner, and dad is occupied somewhere he can't see you.

2. "forget" to put on bicycle helmet before riding the neighborhood like a Hells Angel in training.

3. Pop wheelies like nobody's business.

4. Come out unscathed for so long, you get cocky.

5. Decide that, at 6, you can pop that wheelie and continue to pedal your bike. 

6. Wow, that worked!  Time for the dismount.

6.1 Uh-oh! Speed wobble on the return!

6.2 This was NOT A GOOD IDEA

6.3 Suck in breath to scream - this is so loud that daddy hears it down the street over the noise of the stereo.

6.4 Fly ass-over-teakettle over handlebars. 

6.5 Re-design asphalt with lovely blood-hued ikat print.

6.6 Scream bloody murder while your feet flop uselessly in the air

7. Bleed EVERYWHERE.

Drama came running into the house yelling about Stanky and blood, and he needs a towel.  I peeked around him and saw Grumpy holding Stanky's head, blood squirting everywhere, Stanky's eyes rolling around trying to see what was happening.  Notice that Grumpy looks like he's about to freak the freak out, but is holding on by a thread for the kid, who is freaking out enough for, oh, 20 people.

Once we started cleaning up the poor kid, he ended up with an abrasion between the eyes, across the whole upper lip, just under the lower lip, and both knees.  Ok, not too bad right?  Oh so wrong!

His nose bled quite a bit - ok no problem.  We handled that (it's not our first).  But the mouth.  The MOUTH.  Just. Kept. Gooshing.  The lip was so swollen it was hard to get a good look inside his mouth.  Grumpy mentioned it looked like the gums were 'messed up'.  And how, people.  And how.  I called all over town to talk to an on-call dentist.  Because of course this happened at 5:18 pm, which is exactly 18 minutes after any office open on Saturday closes.  One gentleman finally called me back (he was in a conference, on vacation in Florida, but was so concerned with my message he called me back - THAT many deserves my business!)  Once he heard about those mobile teeth, he sent us straight to the ER people.  As in do not pass go, please make sure the jaw isn't broken right now and I will call you back first thing Monday.

Grumpy was awesome - he works at a local hospital and called ahead, so they were expecting us.  Which means that we were fast-tracked trauma-style.  Which still means almost 5 hours in the ER, but seriously, when the ERs in both of our hospitals have been running in emergency triage for months now, that's ah-may-zing. 

Our church was awesome as well.  I called Miss Sue and got our urgent need on the prayer chain.  That was followed almost immediately by a call from our pastor PR, who had just come down from a Men's Ministry campout, where he, himself was injured.  And that guy, people he happened to go to the wrong hospital, but he tracked us down, and came to just be with us for a few hours.  That's love, right there.

We finally saw two ER docs, and they called in the trauma dentist.  Stanky got to have a halo x-ray, which he thought was cool.  Final Dx: Poor kid managed to break the remaining roots off of the top 4 center baby teeth y'all.  Shoved 'em backwards a good 4 mm.  He's going to lose them within a week or two, which is about a year or two sooner than he would have.  Thankfully, the permanent teeth were nowhere near the break, and should erupt normally, at the normal time. 

He also very likely fractured his nose, but it was not displaced in any way, so we just need to watch it. 

He's very sore and still quite swollen - he will have a fat upper lip for weeks.   And he will never, ever stop telling us how much he HATES the day he got hurt, and how he wishes that day never happened.  Me to buddy, me too.

BEFORE



AFTER