Too close for comfort

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Anyone who knows what happened yesterday will probably figure that I would be blogging about it soon. I am, however, also going to post pictures. They are very graphic, but they prove a miracle. One that I don't want to forget and that I want documented. If you don't think you can stomach the pictures, please just email me and I will send you the whole story sans pictures.

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Now on to yesterday's events...........

You know those craft papers that have two layers with the top layer being black and the bottom layer is rainbow and when you scratch the top, black layer off with a bamboo skewer the rainbow layer can be seen?

Beckham loves that stuff. We all do. He was lucky enough to get some for Christmas. Friday night he was scratching away on his bed until we tucked him in. He put the paper and the skewer on the end of the bed and we all forgot about it.

Yesterday, at about 11:30 am, I asked him to go get dressed for the day. Anyone who knows Beckham knows he is all boy and rarely travels in the conventional manner of placing one foot in front of the other. Often he rolls, or "flips", dives, or any other ninja like manner you can think of. Yesterday was no exception.

His dresser is on the far side of his room. Passing his bed to get there he decided to roll/side flip using the end of his bed and his head as leverage. The only problem was, now keep in mind I did not see it happen but he told me what he was doing so I am assuming this is how things came to be, as he placed his hand down he must have put it on the blunt end of the skewer causing the pointed end to pop up. Immediately after his hand went down he put his head down to aid in the "flip" and impaled the skewer into his eye lid!

Thankfully, I was downstairs already when he started crying. I went into his room thinking he had stubbed his toe. When he turned around I could not believe what I was seeing. I quickly surveyed the puncture and determined it was too close to the eye for me to attempt to pull it out. Picking Beckham up, careful about not bumping the skewer, I rushed upstairs calling for Kevin.

When Kevin saw Beckham he took him from me and headed to the car. I called our neighbor's The Messinas, thankfully Carol was able to drop everything and come watch the other three kids. Shortly after I called them I called Grandma Candace to see if she could come watch the kids for an extended period of time. She could, and there are not enough words for how grateful we are to know we could leave them with her all day and they would be well cared for!

We headed to Insta-care.

Let me tell you something, you know how insta-care and the ER have bad reputations for long waits? Yeah, well, when you have something sticking out of your eye there is no wait time.

But they debated about whether to let us back only because they knew they couldn't pull it out, but they were concerned about the skewer moving as we went to the ER. They ended up putting some gauze under the skewer and taping everything down.

What was Beckham doing this whole time? He was being so brave! When it first happened he cried, of course, and asked us to take it out. But once I explained to him that when he was crying his eye was scrunching up and I was afraid it was going to hurt him more he calmed himself right down and was very still. So much so that I told him he must have super powers to be so calm which would make him a super hero to which he factually informed me that, "Mom, Super Heroes don't get things stuck in their eyes." And if he could have rolled his eyes at me, he would have.

When ended up at Primary Childrens Medical Center's ER. And again, no waiting once they saw him.

This time we had many, many, many medical staff come and look at Beckham. Most of them were not on the case, but they all wanted to see.

Thankfully, an opthimologist was in the ER at the time and Dr. Williams came right over. He was able to help Beckham open his eye a little bit and put a eye test chart in front of him. The good news is it missed the eye globe and he can see 20/20.

Even the opthamologist had to take a picture on his phone because his attendee would want to, "know what's going on..." I'm pretty sure he really wanted to say, "see this!"

Here are the pictures

At this point Beckham was in a little more pain so they gave him some morphine. The morphine took the pain away, and slow to communicate, but it also made him sick to his stomach. He told us he was going to throw up, but we were so afraid to sit him up in fear of the skewer being shoved further up that we hesitated and he vomited all over himself. Which lead to the cutting of his shirt because we couldn't very well lift it over his head....what with the stick in his eye and all.

He lamented that that was he favorite shirt, but I promised him I would get him another plain black t-shirt as soon as I could. Kids are so funny about their favorite things.

Now that we knew the eye was OK the next concern was the brain. The angle that the skewer was logged suggested, if it had gone it far enough, there would be some contact with the brain. Off to get a CT scan we went.

Thankfully, (you'll notice I say that a lot in this post....appropriate no?) It stopped short of the brain. Whew!

Basically, if you are adding things up the skewer entered and logged into the ONLY spot that could possibly have minimal damage. Everyone told us how lucky he was. I told them I didn't think it was luck.I strongly believe that this was NOT a coincidence and that he was very much protected and watched over.

They needed to do surgery to take it out because of the fact that the skewer was bamboo and they didn't want to risk leaving any fragments in there to cause infection. The problem is the OR was extremely busy yesterday. They weren't able to get him into surgery until 8:15pm after having the skewer in his eye lid of almost 8 1/2 hours!

Honestly, beside the creepiness factor of looking at my baby and seeing a stick poking out of his face near his eye, the hardest part of yesterday was just how long it was sticking in there. Once we knew the skewer was resting in the "sweet" spot we didn't want to risk moving it even an inch. But it was sticking out so far that if he looked down the end of the skewer nearly hit his chest which would cause it to push up ward. Also, any time he moved his hand we were afraid he would accidentally push the stick up ward as well. Remembering all that you can now imagine the state of high alert Kevin and I were experiencing for all those hours.

When Beckham came out of surgery not only was I relieved that it had gone well (they had to do general anesthesia and that made me nervous. They also had to stitch together one small muscle that got damaged) but I was just SO glad that skewer was out and it no longer had the potential to hurt him any more!

Everyone kept telling us they had never seen a kid so well behaved with such a traumatic thing. He really was so brave and very obedient. He didn't try and pull the skewer out. He didn't complain about the long wait. He was amazing.

By the time he woke up from the anesthesia and was able to eat it was about 10:30. He told me he was going slow with the crackers because he was saving room for the lunch and dinner that he missed. When I told him we weren't going to have lunch and dinner he was just so sad. So I promised him a grilled cheese sandwich when we got home.

Just before he was released from the hospital, I yawned and said, "I am so tired. Beckham are you tired?"

"No, I just woke up from a nap!"

I thought to myself, " I'm so glad to see the old Beckham back."

We finally got home around 12:15 am this morning.

Made a grilled cheese sandwich.

Tucked Beckham into bed.

Offered a prayer of gratitude and fully acknowledged the divine intervention in our lives that day and marveled that even after all of that we got to bring him home nearly unscathed.

Today, Beckham is great. His eye is still swollen shut.



However, that is not slowing him down. Most of the day has been spent with me begging,

"Beckham please stop rolling on the ground."

"Beckham, please stop running....I cannot have you tripping today."

"Beckham just sit when you get to the couch, you don't need a running start to get up!"

We've got one pretty special kid on our hands.....and we'll take him!