CAUTION: IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE SIGHT OF BLOOD DON'T READ THIS POST. IF YOU DO READ THE POST DON'T WHINE AT ME ABOUT THE GORY PICTURES, YOU WERE WARNED.
So one night in December I had to leave the church for an activity with the young women. Josh and Jared were both in the church at scouts. I came walking into the back of the church and my friend Melissa came hustling toward me. She said Jared had walked into their cub scout activity and asked her if she knew where I was because he had cut his knee and might need stitches. She and I both walked into the gym where the cubs and their other leader were. Just then Jared pulled up his pant leg to expose his knee....Melissa and I took one look and both walked out of the room. She walked back in to talk to Jared while I sat in the hall trying not to cry because I knew he was headed to the hospital and I was really concerned he would need surgery, and I didn't want him to see the look on my face and panic.
Melissa went to find a first aid kit I asked people in the foyer if anyone had any medical experience in the building. One of them went to get a very sweet elderly woman who was sitting outside the Bishop's office. She had been a nurse. Jacob's scout leader, Brother West, walked past and I turned to him and said "hey, you are kind of medically, right"he said "yes, what do you need?" I told him to head to the gym and he asked "what am I looking for?" "oh, you'll see it when you get there." He walked into the gym and took one look at Jared's leg and I could see he was concerned too. He would look at the cut with this "OH MY GOSH" look on his face and then tell Jared, "it doesn't look too bad...don't look at it." He probably told him not to look at it 7-8 different times.
Brother West and the sweet elderly sister proceeded to wrap up Jared's leg and get him ready to transport to the hospital while I called Patrick. I don't think I even told Patrick what was wrong, just that he needed to come take Jared to the hospital. I really wasn't dealing well with all of this. The size of the wound just made me panic and I could not really get control of the situation so I'm really grateful for all the people who were there that night who could function better than I could.
Throughout all of this Jared sat stoically. He never flinched, never cried. He was kind of joking with everyone. Patrick said they got in the car and he stopped at a CVS to get some tylenol in case they had a wait at the ER and he said for a brief minute Jared broke down because the pain was starting to hit. The rest of the night he was in a pretty jovial mood and never showed any distress.
I took the rest of the kids home and met Patrick and Jared at the hospital. They got right in and the ER staff were all impressed with the wound. I think every person in the ER stopped in to have a peek and they all would say something like "WOW! THAT is a good one. You will have an AWESOME scar with that one." They took XRays and then we sat around waiting for the results while Jared entertained us with his attempt to look like he was dying.
Jared's scout leader showed up to check in on Jared and assist with a blessing. He felt terrible that he didn't realize how bad Jared was hurt and we assured him it was okay. We totally understood how he didn't know and that there was nothing he could've done to prevent the accident. So finally we get to, WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED? The scouts were playing football outside. One kid threw the ball and Jared dived to catch it, in the bushes, and landed on the landscape edging. The interesting thing was that this was a pressure cut. His jeans weren't cut at all, only his leg underneath. After he hit, Jared stood up, walked over to his leader and said, "I cut my leg, I'm going to go find my mom" and his leader said, "OK". He had no idea how bad it was and said Jared was so calm and was walking so he just assumed it was a small cut. He found me in the hall right after Jared left for the ER and said "hey did Jared find you..he cut his leg but I don't know how big it was." I started laughing at that point and told him he was headed to the ER. The poor man felt awful, but it was a funny moment.
The doctor came back with the Xray results and told us that Jared would only need stitches. The skin and fat had been torn but none of the tissue or muscle or tendons underneath had been damaged. WHEW! That was my biggest fear. Here is another shot before the stitches.
The doctor started the stitches. She ended at 23 which really disappointed Jared. He was hoping for 31 so he could be declared "he who has had the most stitches in the family." I know...this sounds like a very coveted award. Patrick is still the record holder with 30.
After the stitches, Jared was fitted with a leg brace. They did not want him bending his knee AT all, and he would need to sleep in the brace for a few weeks. Luckily we were headed into Christmas Break so he wouldn't have to deal with this at school...or so we thought.
After 12 days we had to go in to get stitches out. The doctor decided removing all the stitches was not going to work because the cut hadn't healed enough, so he took out every other stitch.
On the 2nd day back to school I got a phone call from the school nurse. "You're going to have to take him back in to get the cut resewed." I got to the school where Jared told me he was walking to his spot in PE and carrying the knee pad I insisted he wear. He was going to put the knee pad on when he got to his roll call spot. So he was walking along when a kid intentionally stuck his leg out and tripped him. He exchanged words with the kid and walked into the coaches office. The coach immediately put him in a rolling chair and wheeled him down to the nurse, hollering, "don't bleed all over the floor". Uh..thanks coach. I filled out an incident report so the vice principal would look into the tripping and hauled Jared to the doctor.
The doctor looked at the cut and said he could not stitch it shut. It was just too big and messy and the wound would just have to fill in on its own. He ended up scrubbing out all the skin and scar tissue that had built up. Jared was pretty much starting over. He said to keep it in the brace and that I needed to scrub out all the dead skin 2 times per day. He said it would look like no progress for days and then suddenly it would seem like skin grew overnight. He also gave me ointment to prevent MRSA. He also pulled him out of PE for the next couple of months (hello...if we had just listened to the mother....).
Over the next few weeks we religiously cleaned the cut and bandaged it every day. Lil Miss would scream and scream at the sight of his open wound but would never look away. She had a horror fascination with it. At one point he bumped it and it popped open. That was the only point that he broke down because that meant healing would take longer. This was the only time he expressed frustration with the situation. I have to admit he is a trooper. He never complained or cried. Just that one moment he had a brief let down. Eventually skin started to grow and we would cheer, "wooo- hooo, we are growing skin!!! Hopefully it will be done by baseball season."
Finally after 13 weeks this cut was closed. Whew! What a long, tedious thing it is to grow new skin. For the next year I made Jared wear a small basketball knee brace for sports and PE. His scar is about 7 cm long at 2 cm at the widest point. It is pretty nasty looking, but always a good conversation starter!
*****Oh..and the kid that tripped Jared...he was just being a dork like 12 year old boys are. He just tripped someone, not realizing Jared had that kind of injury. If he had tripped ANY other kid in the school it would've been no big deal...he just picked the wrong kid. I told the principal that I understood that. The issue I had was he immediately denied he had tripped him and he didn't apologize or help Jared in any way. If he had apologized and gotten Jared to help and explained then that he was just goofing off and didn't mean to hurt anyone then there wouldn't have been an investigation. Hopefully he learned 2 lessons out of this. Tripping is bad and apologize when you hurt someone.
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