First, before I get started, I have to say that I hit pay dirt at the supermarket today: lavender-colored shampoo called "Free Me Freesia". I had to buy it for Si.
*****
Now, this post is dedicated to my old friend Amy, who commented on my blog yesterday and called me "amazing". Yes, I did get my Christmas cards out by the second week of January, it's true. Maybe that does make me amazing.
Not according to my son. Poor guy. He's the victim of my un-amazing-ness. My star has fallen.
Nate woke up in the wee hours, screaming in pain. I staggered, semi-conscious, to his bedside and he howled that there was something in his eye! I turned on the light and there was...nothing! I searched, and I wiped the corners of his eye with a wet cloth, but nothing helped. Finally, I gave up and told him to close the eye, and we would see how it was in the morning.
As soon as he woke up this morning, he started crying. I searched again. Nothing! I dropped a little saline in his eye and he immediately felt better and trotted off to school. Huh! Well, okey-dokey; I trotted off to work.
I got a call from the after-school care this afternoon. Did I know Nathan's eye was huge and red? Awww, s***. You know what this means. InstiCare.
At InstiCare, the doctor awed and fascinated us by dropping dye in Nate's eye that glows under black light. In the darkened room, his little eye-ball glared neon yellow. Sara and I oooh-ed and aah-ed. The doctor showed me an opaque smudge on his cornea and turned the room light back on. "Well," she said, turning toward me, "it looks a lot like a...chemical burn?" She raised her eyebrows.
Deer in the headlights! Yes! Yes! I admit it! I've been by dropping battery acid into his little eyes when he wets the bed!
OK, no I haven't.
Then it dawned on me. Nate has been having trouble with chilblains lately (he washes his hands way too much, to ward off the evil flesh-eating staph infection he heard about at school last fall - a topic for a different post), and I rubbed Desitin into his hands before I tucked him in last night. If he had slept with his eye pressed against the back of his hand... That'd do it... Desitin is so thick and oily, too. Not the kind of thing you can just blink away.
The doctor prescribed drops, and we left, Nata's eye oozing interesting neon yellow droplets. As we walked out through the waiting room, I said to Nate, "Well, I guess the Desitin was a bad idea. No bonus mommy-points for that." "No," said Nate, taking my hand and quoting the Transformer movie to me as we walked across the parking lot, "I'd call that a solid B-minus."
9 comments:
better than a c plus????!!! wow... I'll know now..not to use that stuff on the coffee bean...
Glad you got to the bottom of it! I'll be steering clear of that stuff too!
A solid B minus for you!
I remember when my oldest daughter, Stephanie, was 6. She had a cold & her sinus' were really stuffed up, BIG TIME.
My grand idea was to poor hot, steaming water mixed with VICS vapor rub into a large mixing bowl, and have her inhale the fumes.
Yeah, the operative word here is "fumes".
Well, I mixed up the concoction & promptly shoved my little girl's face right over the brew. The howling was almost instantaneous, though not quite as jubilant as I expected.....
Did you know that adding half a container of VICs into hot, steaming water makes your eyes really, really burn?? Ahhh...good one, Dad.
My poor kid....I still cringe every time I think of it. She's now 12, and she doesn't want anything to do with VICs or bowls with hot, steamy water.
I'm sure we'll all laugh about it in years to come. :)
Anononymously, John
Are you sure you didn't get 'Free Me Freesia' in his eye?
I still find you amazing Kate. I have never, not once since having kids, sent out Christmas cards. Not even in mid January.
After reading your post, my husband had to run and go see if his shampoo had a girly name, and was very releaved to find it was 'Suave for Men' Now he's feeling manly.
Amy
Oh. I love stories like these. I always want to print them out and put in a file so that I can prove to Liv that other mothers mess up occasionally too.
When I was a kid, my mother used to make us SWALLOW a spoonful of Vicks Vap-o-rub if we had a cold to "open us up." The frackin jar had a skull and crossbones on it and she didn't think that making us EAT it would hurt us??
Well, we all lived. And now we talk about it at dinner and use it on occasion to threaten our children. ("Do I need to get the Vick's out???")
Maria,
That sounds like the maxim my Polish mother (and her mother before that) lives by:
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
-Anonymously, John
hmmmm...the Desitin could still be a good idea....IF you can convince the child to wear some cotton gloves or mittens (ooh or even socks) on his hands in the bed.
Poor mama, that B- really blows the solid A you had going!
Hope Nate 's feelong OK now.
Wow. I had no idea that Desitin could give a chemical burn. Not an issue any more for us anymore, but I do know some women with little ones who might benefit from your anecdote. Nate is a clever little boy to have quoted Transformers in such an appropriate way. :)
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