The Other Trauma Incident

The last post about Cade’s church camp experience might be more *******if you knew what happened to us last week. Feel free to insert any of these words in place of the ****** – funny, ironic, irritating, or use your imagination.

Last Wednesday Jay was working with a former student on a welding project. Ethan was the one doing the welding so Jay didn’t have on his helmet. Around midnight Wednesday evening/Thursday morning Jay woke up with flash burn. It’s common for this to bother the welder about 12 hours after he burns his corneas. Of course Jay fell right into the textbook description of this. Luckily Mom had spent the night with us because of our traveling plans for the holiday weekend. She was going to take me to work and then Jay would pick me up after and we’d head to Fayetteville. Instead we headed to the Emergency Room about 1:30 Thursday morning.

Jay had his eyes shut tight so he couldn’t see anything. I parked out front of the hospital and walked him in. I was getting ready to grab onto his arm, kind of like a wedding escort pose but instead he grabbed my hand. I was a little unsure of this move because the wedding pose seems to offer the leader more control than a hand hold. The hand hold means the other person is two arms lengths away, but since Jay did it this way I went along with it. It worked all right for about 2 steps and then I ran him into a wall. Not only did he hit the wall he stubbed the toe that’s missing the toenail (I told him God gave us toenails for a reason and you shouldn’t make such rash decisions when removing them permanently). He was not pleased with me. I started laughing and the ladies at the front desk saw it all happen. I think they thought we were drunk because they had a somewhat concerned look on their face as we walked through the door. They relaxed considerably once I told them why we where there. They did offer Jay a wheel chair so he wouldn’t be subjected to my abuse any longer.

Once we finally got into the exam room our nurse came in. I had a hard time looking at him with out laughing. Imagine Billy Ray Cyrus during the Achy Breaky years. Now picture him 50ish, graying hair, beer belly, scrubs, gold chain around his neck surrounded by chest hairs and a belly bag. I’m still not sure what was going on with the belly bag. As soon as he left I asked Jay if he saw any of that. He could briefly make out long gray hair. He was pretty disappointed that he couldn’t see the whole thing. Once they got Jay started on the pain reliever there were a lot of Billy Ray jokes flying around the room.

Jay’s eyes were fine, only a burn. The doctor told them it is very typical for welders to come in in the middle of the night. She said a welder will hardly make it through the night with one of these burns without getting some kind of relief. Everything’s back to normal with Jay’s eyes – this was just a good lesson to remember. Even if you’re not the one welding it’s a good idea to wear a helmet.

So since we’d already had one trip to the ER, it made yesterday’s trip even better. It’s just one of those things in life. Cade is doing fine today. He and Jay went back to the camp this morning so hopefully Cade will come home with his t-shirt. After getting more information from Jay last night we’re lucky 3 stitches is all we ended up with. Cade fell off of the monkey bars. He could’ve broken an arm which would’ve been more devastating to our vacation plans than Bertha could be.