I'll Take Three Staples With That Head Wound

Congratulations Cheeks. You are now the proud owner of three metal staples in the back of your little head.

Thank you Dr. Shumacker for my couch surfing 3-year-old's shiny, new skull bling.

Cheeks learned the hard way two hours ago why mommy says he can't jump on the couch.

As his uncle recently told him, I don't tell him what to do just to be mean. I do it to protect him, because I care. But do you think any of his uncle's chat actually sunk in? C'mon. He's three.

"You CANNOT jump on the couch," I sternly told him. "But I want to," he retorted with a bratty sneer. I reached in his direction to physically remove him from the couch. He jumped back to escape my reach and fell over backwards off of the couching and head-first into the angular iron base of our living room lamp.

Talk about a surreal parenting moment - holding your wailing, bucking child down while an emergency room doctor plunges a lengthy needle filled with a wonder numbing drug into your preschooler's bloodied, swollen scalp. You have to look away or you might faint and need emergency medical attention yourself.

Next the good doc squirts a stream of cleansing water into your child's gaping gash. Finally, he shoots two silver staples into the pinched together edges of the laceration.

"Hmmm," the doctor mumbles, scratching his beard and peering closely at his most recent, still throbbing handy work. "I think I'll shoot one more in there for good measure."

Snap. The staple gun fires again into the wound. Your child's head kicks back in response and he lets out a defeatist whimper. Now three staples shine amidst the dried blood stiffened hairs spiking out of the back of his tender head.

The last step is a smear of glossy antibacterial ointment slathered atop the staples for an extra degree of grusomeness.

We stopped off at Johnny's Frozen Yogurt on the way home. Spiraled frozen sugary things topped with gummy bears and jelly beans make everything feel better. Even wounded heads (and wounded egos). At the emergency room I promised Cheeks one cherry for each staple. Back at home and happy again, he gobbled up all three cherries as I cut his blood spattered T-shirt off with a pair of scissors.

Now onto night watch. The doctor says I'm to wake Cheeks every hour or so to make sure he can wake up at all. Lovely. I think I'll tuck him into bed with me and his daddy, just to be sure.

Concussion. Infection. Strange and unusual behavior. I think I can identify the first two if I must. But that last one, strange behavior, well, we're talking Cheeks here. Most of his behavior is strange. And I mean that in a mostly nice way. Mostly.

Gnarly head wounds are nothing new to the Slackstress home. Two years ago my kindergartner Mouth gashed his forehead with a clumsy crash landing on the corner of a concrete step. Surgical glue came to the rescue that time with maximum fight and maximum forced restraint.

Pigtails fell down the steps and out of my sister's RV over the summer. She didn't walk for two weeks and severely sprained her neck.

Why do these injuries happen on my watch? Must I stand directly behind my kids every second to make sure they don't stumble and fall? How could I possibly be in three frenetic places at once?

There's only so many times you can start your explanation with "I was right there but didn't catch him/her in time," before people start to question your abilities as a care giver and mother? How many wounds can be written off with the old "kids will be kids" or "boys will be boys" sayings?

The countdown to staple removal is on, whether or not I'm busy beating myself up for how my kids accidentally beat themselves up. Nine days to go.

I'm not looking forward to when the numbing agent in Cheeks' Frankenstein wound wears off. Why don't the nurses numb the worried mothers in the ER while they're at it? How about a sedative? Anything.