October 3, 2012
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Eye Trouble
Yesterday, our son had a run in with the pavement, and the pavement won.
He was riding his bike with his friend – something they do nearly every day. The pavement was a little slick, due to a bit of rain and a return to nasty humidity despite the fact that the calendar tells us it is FALL now. The boys got too close to one another, the tires bumped, and one boy flew over his handle bars. That boy would be ours.
Thankfully, I was not here when it happened. I’m sure I would have totally freaked had I witnessed this event, but I was out with our daughter and he was under the care of a good friend, who has three sons and is therefore infinitely qualified to handle this sort of thing.
He was wearing his helmet, and I’m pretty relieved that we had spent some time readjusting straps on it recently, since it had gotten loose and had been sort of dangling off the side of his head. The helmet protected his head, but not his eye. He got the instant goose egg above the eye, and nearly 12 hours later it has become more of a mound of scraped, purplish flesh that is creeping into a puffy eyelid that has a smoky eyeshadow look to it. We kept him home from school, because when he got up this morning he couldn’t even open the damaged eye. It’s looking a bit better now, after lots of ice, but he still looks quite creepy. Too bad it didn’t happen later in October — instant Halloween costume.
Ice for a few more hours, then we switch to warm compresses.
He was complaining about the ice last night, so I told him people used to use raw steak for that purpose. “Do we have any steak?” he asked, hopefully. Thankfully, we did not have steak in the house. I’m not sure I could stomach watching my maimed boy sit around with raw meat on his face.
Boys. Never a dull moment!
Comments (10)
Ouch! Steak is too expensive for a compress, anyway.
Oh, and you’re not allowed to say “Boys” because, in our house, it’s the girl who has had the fractured elbow, broken ankle, scraped knees, head injuries, yellowjacket attacks, sliced finger, and you name it. My son is way too cautious for all that nonsense. We joke that the only reason he’s been to the emergency room is that he had to come along with his sister so many times.
@DrTiff – Then maybe I should say “kids who are not first born,” because that would capture both of our accident prone dare devils!
@turningreen - Yes, that would be an acceptable generalization based on our sample of two! Hope he’s feeling (and looking) better.
I was afraid the punchline was going to be “and tomorrow is picture day!”
I’m not sure I’d waste a steak on one of my kids’ eyes.
My boy fell off his bike yesterday too! Weird!! He’s still limping. No eye injuries but quite a lot of bad road rash.
What was the steak thing about, anyway? Why steak?
@madhousewife - No, not tomorrow. But I did say something along the lines of “this better heal by picture day!” It felt like the mom-ish thing to say, even though picture day is not imminent.
@ordinarybutloud - That IS weird! Was it your middle son who totally reminds me of my son? I bet it was. Spooooooky. Mine got a bit of road rash, too, but it was secondary to the gigantic bulging eye.
@transvestite_rabbit - Maybe it just made it seem more manly and tough to have raw meat on your beat up face? A quick Google search says it was just about the cold temperature. Personally, I’d rather put on some chocolate ice cream and hope some of it melts into my mouth.
@turningreen - HA…no. It was my oldest, who falls off things like bikes because he sometimes loses focus *even while he’s in motion.* But my middle kid won’t even ride a bike now because of his horrible wipeout in CO. Now he rides the neighbor kid’s scooter (it’s electric) if he can get away with it. He can’t keep up on his regular scooter. Luckily for him everything is close by.
@ordinarybutloud – Ours said today that he’s afraid to ride his bike now. I don’t buy it, though. Back in the saddle ASAP, I’m sure.
@turningreen - next year all his friends will be riding together to the middle school. He’ll have to get over his bike phobia before then.