Granuloma

Or as Nate calls it, "Grammy-oma". Well, one of my blog buddies was reading my previous post and wanted to know what I was referring to when I mentioned the "Bitten-Off Granuloma". My friends in the real world have all heard the story too many times (sorry, real-world friends) but I'll record it here for posterity.

So, when Nate was 3, he got this thing on his arm that looked like a blood blister. I paid no attention to it for a few days, thinking he had pinched his arm somehow. But when I finally got a good look at it, it looked kind of lumpy and not very blister-like. Hmmm... I waited a few days, but it remained on his arm, pinkie-nail sized. Finally I called my physician father and described it over the phone. He told me it was a granuloma: a spot on the skin where a little cluster of capillaries rises up to the surface. His pronouncement was basically, "Get thou to the dermatologist." I offered to lance it. "NO!" he said. "It'll bleed like a stuck pig."



OK, OK. I called the dermatologist and got an appointment for something like two months from then. Groovy, except Nate got tired of waiting. One morning, I was in the kitchen listening to him prattling to himself in the other room. Suddenly, he made a startled little noise and came to find me with blood dripping off his chin and gushing from his arm. When Dad said "stuck pig", he meant it. I applied pressure and asked Nathan what the HELL? I don't like it, so I bit it off, was the explanation. Yes, of course! That's what we do with things we don't like. OY. I put a Band-Aid on it. Well and good, but for five days, every time I took the Band Aid off to change it, it would gush forth afresh. As soon as the pressure was off it, glub, glub, glub.

We went to the pediatrician. She lifted the Band-Aid and said, "Well, this is a mess." "Can you cauterize it?" "No, I don't have the tools for the job. Go up to the Emergency Room and they'll get someone to take care if it. They'll prioritize you because of the bleeding."

Great. We went to the ER. When the triage nurse lifted the Band-Aid, which had been keeping him from bleeding to death for the last 6 days, I said, "See, it just keeps gushi-" It had stopped. So we waited. And waited. Six hours, with nothing to eat or drink for Nathan. Six hours alone in a thick-walled examining room, during which time, I saw a nurse maybe twice. I have never been so stir-crazy in my life. I would lift the Band-Aid and plead with the slow ooze, "C'mon. Gush!" Finally, we were sent up to dermatology, where, in five minutes, they had it cauterized and we were on our way. The staff there were very sweet to Nathan. They used a cute little puppet to help explain the (20 second) procedure. Wouldn't want the little guy to be traumatized. HIM? What about ME? I was freshly sprung from the ER. I felt like I had just been released from a Turkish prison.

At any rate, this went into the annals of family history as "The Most Blood I Have Seen as a Mother" for several years, only recently to be replaced by the cut head. Now, any little sore or blemish that shows up on Nathan brings a chorus of, "Don't bite it!"