In Stitches

Last night for Family Home Evening our family talked about keeping journals. Bruce and I got out some of our old journals and read some things to our kids. They were semi-interested in the very little bit of my teenager-hood that I shared with them. (I was kind of a negative little brat back then. Who'dve thunk?) But they really enjoyed it when I read stories from the journal I kept when we lived in Tennessee. In that journal I had copies of a few of the letters I sent home, and all the cute, funny things my kids did.

So your story for today is: Jason Gets Stitches

"Around 12:15 or so on Tuesday, November 18 [1997], we were finishing up a long trip to the fabric store. (Any trip to the fabric store with Jason and Lindsey in tow is a long one. And this was the first of several errands I had to run that day.) I was at the cutting table and just placing my order, and trying to keep Lindsey from doing a nose-dive out of the shopping cart, when Jason spied a neighbor-boy who was there with his grandpa. (In fact, it was Perry.)" [Apparently I'd written home about Perry before.] "So Jason and Perry took off chasing around the cutting table. When suddenly I hear Jason start screaming. I couldn't see him, but I figured he fell down or something. So I started to get him and tell him that he'd better stay with me. Then I saw that he was gushing blood from his forehead. I took a look and figured he'd need stitches. Well, by now practically everyone in the store had come to our aid. There's ladies saying, 'You'll be all right darlin!' " [You just have to imagine it in the Southern accent—it's even better that way.] "and Bandaids and paper towels being shoved at me from all directions. By the time we'd slapped a Bandaid onto the cut Jason had calmed down, and the general consensus among the onlookers was that he would not need stitches. But since his dr. was only a five-minute drive away I figured I'd drop in and have her take a look.
By the time we got to the dr. Jason was acting perfectly fine. But after a half-hour wait, Dr. Saraswat looked under his Bandaid and said, "This will need stitches. I'm sorry." (She seemed to feel really bad about it, but I wasn't really all that worried.) So she called the emergency room and we went right on over. (The hospital is across the street from Dr. Saraswat.)
By the time we got to the E.R. Lindsey was really crabby. It was past lunch time and getting to be nap time. So I think they weren't sure which kid needed help. Jason did OK until he realized they were going to do something to him. They tied his arms down to his sides by wrapping a sheet around him and then you should have heard him scream—or did you? He screamed the whole time [they were stitching him up], and then when they unwrapped him he was fine. He even said 'thank-you' to the doctor.
Then we went to lunch, and home—having lost all of our errand-running time. And then I was slightly nauseated and in desperate need of a nap.

Jason shows me his pretty hospital bracelet.
I am pregnant with Brandon, and much more worn-out than I look.

Well, we all survived. Jason gets his stitches out tomorrow. He will have a little scar above his left eyebrow."

My kids really enjoyed that story last night. They particularly liked that Jason thanked the doctor after having screamed his head off for the entire procedure.

Sadly, I don't have those kinds of details for most of my other kids. In Tennessee I was desperate to maintain contact with the family and I wanted to let them know everything about the kids. I wish now, looking back, that I'd continued to write the stories of things all my little kids did. So I guess this is my plug for journaling today:

Keep a good journal now—it'll keep you in stitches later! ;-)