On Wednesday night, my 3 year old son woke up around 1.30am to go to the bathroom. I noticed he had one of my daughter's hair rubber bands around his right wrist. I have warned him about the dangers of doing this several times but apparently to no avail. When I took it off, he complained of his hand hurting. Well, of course! It has feeling in it again!
I moved him to the couch in the spare room. (Once he gets up at night, he typically wakes up several more times that night.) Several more times in the next few hours I found him in bed with me. I was beginning to get frustrated with him as he kept telling me his hand hurt. I continued to reassure him that his hand would be fine and that it was all better now.
About 3:45am I heard him crying. I went in to the spare room with every intention of disciplining him for continuing to wake me up over nothing substantial when something (the Holy Spirit, of course) prompted me to look at his other hand.
Oh my goodness!!!
He had an even smaller rubber band around that wrist and his hand appeared to be swollen to nearly twice its size! I quickly pulled it off (with difficulty) and contemplated for a few moments what I should do.
Does this warrant a trip to the ER? Well, it was still flesh-colored. At least it looked like it in the night light glow. But it was HUGE! Should I call the doctor's office? No, they would just tell me to use my judgment and take him to the ER if I felt it was that serious.
I then remembered hearing a story once of a baby who had gotten a hair wrapped around one of her toes so tightly that by the time her parents noticed, her toe was blue. She had been okay. And this was far less serious than that. So I opted to stay home.
My son cried until I got him a cool washcloth to wrap around his hand. He fell asleep immediately and slept soundly the rest of the night.
When morning came, his hand was still swollen but not nearly as much as it had been. He seemed to be acting normally but just in case, I asked him how his hand was doing. He replied, "My fingernails are dirty."
Whew! Everything's okay then!
Even with my obsessive compulsive photo-taking disorder, I didn't think 3:45am was the best time to pop out the camera so I don't have a picture of his totally swollen hand to show you, but I did manage to get my son to hold the hair tie that had been wrapped around his wrist for a picture the next day! I realize it's blurry, but you get the idea!
2 comments:
Oh, my! That is one tiny rubber band! I'm glad you got it off his wrist.
Oh wow, I didn't even know that happened. Poor little guy!
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