From Boy To Man

*** if you don’t like blood or ouchies look away now ***

I love Big J, but to say he is accident prone is putting it mild. When he started going on overnight campouts with the Scouts I was a little nervous. I was sure that he would continue on his usual course, but I was wrong. He went on his first few outings without any problems and I was led into a false sense of security.

On Friday he was getting ready to leave on another campout and we were stuffing last minute things in his pack…you know the important things like snacks. And just jokingly I asked him if we should add his suture kit. Yes, he has a suture kit that the ER gave him from the last time he had stitches. He said no that he wouldn’t get hurt on this trip.

I should have listened to my feelings.

On Saturday we expected the Scouts to be home around dinner time. Dinner time came and went and I didn’t know if I should worry or not. Then a little later we got a call from his leader saying they would be home around 8:30 or 9. Oh, and could we call the doctor in our ward and ask him if he could stitch Big J’s knee up.

What?

To make a long story short…he fell into the stream they were hiking by and hit his knee on a rock and cut it up and he would probably need more stitches.

What?

What do you mean by more stitches?

The gash on his knee was pretty impressive and they couldn’t keep it closed or get it to stop bleeding so one of the Scout leaders took a sewing kit they had and put a stitch in his knee to keep it shut. A stitch without anything to take away the pain. They had given him 2 Tylenol, but Big J isn’t great at swallowing pills so he just threw them away. I can’t even imagine how bad that had to feel. Big J asked the leader if he had ever done anything like this and the leader answered, “Nope”. After they had his knee taken care of he had to continue hiking out of the canyon…with his pack. With such an eventful day they stopped in Payson for dinner and then finally made it back to the Valley about 9pm.

I met up with Big J and his leaders at the doctors office to finish the job.

He looks in pretty good spirits considering all that he had gone through.

Here is his knee with that one lonely stitch holding it together. The doctor was pretty impressed with the job done.

     It took quite a bit of irrigating and scrubbing to get all of the dirt out of the wound. It made my knee sore watching them clean it out.

Then finally it came time to stitch it up…the right way.

It only took 5 or 6 stitches to get it all closed up

By this time he was getting a little tired and was ready to go home.

He was such a trooper throughout everything. His leaders were so impressed by how he handled himself.

Any lessons learned? Um yeah…The next time I feel like he should take a suture kit maybe he should just stay home. Or not and trust in great leaders to take care of him. Again.