Update on KIDS and MEDICINE

March 23, 2009


KIDS

I felt so badly for JOSHUA the first couple days after getting his cast on. He was so helpless and had a moping look. He moved very slowly and protected his casted arm. Praise God, his arm never hurt, but his fingers were sore and swollen. The cast was pretty heavy at first for him and he didn’t realize he could lift it on his own. He was uncomfortable sleeping and had to call my in the morning to help him up. It was very hard to see him non-active, wandering around the hose watching his sibling ride bikes, building towers and wrestling. Have no experience with broken limbs I thought, “How can he survive 6 weeks of this?”

Well, I shouldn’t have worried because after a few days Joshua was showing off all the things he can do with one arm – get dressed, climb the bunk bed ladder, ride his bike, and color with his left hand. Joshua seems to actually enjoy his cast and is often seen using it as a gun...of course boys will be boys. The casting material here is the pits and Joshua is “shedding” over everything. Jeff put another layer yesterday on the cast because it was getting soft. Homeschool has become more challenging and time consuming for me because everything he does now has to be oral….all his math problems and spelling tests.

The tree where Joshua fell


Ginny being the first to sign Joshua's cast




I cannot believe how easy potty training MICAH has been! He has basically potty trained himself because I refused to get my hopes up. Can you call it “potty” trained when he makes his steam more often off the front porch than in the potty?

I think every kid has a picture like this!



Ginny, at 7 years old, has her first loose tooth. She has been carrying a mirror around looking at it, wiggling it, and talking about it.


Yesterday we were talking about the Passover and the death angle who killed the first born sons of the Egyptians. Ryan said, “I bet that angel went to hell for murdering.”

As I was reading a paper Ryan wrote for an assignment, I felt that he had left out information. It read, “Walking home, Jason tripped and broke his leg. He went home and got a cast on. The next day….” I felt it was choppy and he left out a hospital scene. I said to Ryan, “How can he just go home and put a cast on?” Ryan replied, “Well, of course his dad helped him.” Now I understood. I had to explain that what dad did for Joshua wasn’t the normal procedure when kids break bones.


MEDICAL HAPPENINGS
MEDICAL HAPPENINGS

Lesson: Don’t let anything “fall in your ear”
Jeff fished for two hours in an 8 years old ear for a BB that he said “just fell in”. It was very deep and Jeff tried everything (lavage, suction, magnets) without success. He tried numerous times to pull it out but it was like trying to grab a basketball with salad tongs. At Jeff’s request he came back the following morning. Jeff first tried to use our teammate’s long powerful magnet but it was too wide to fit in the now swollen ear canal. So Jeff stuck a smaller cylinder shaped magnet in the kid’s ear and watched it disappear. The long magnet was able to stick to the cylinder shaped magnet which was stuck to the BB.

Lesson: Don’t run in the dark
Jeff sewed up our teammate’s son eye lid after he ran into a barbed wire fence while playing hide-and-go-seek in the dark.

Lesson: wear flip flops when farming
A man came to the house after having his toe nearing completely torn off by a farming machine. After numbing the toe and hosing off the affected area, Jeff pulled back the hanging skin and looked inside. It was still so dirty, especially in the joint. Jeff explained that he could sew it up if it was a simple case, but he needed to be in an OR and have his toe scrubbed clean. Plus the tendon was affected and joint were affected. I guess the man didn’t quite grasp the severity of the situation because he asked, “Can’t you just do an average job here?” Jeff replied, “If I do an average job, you will lose your toe.”