“…last night while I was trimming Tony’s fingernails, he jerked and I cut his finger…took off the tip of it, actually. We were unable to control the bleeding at home because he was fighting so bad against it, it was just me and Hannah because Andy was at work, and ended up having to call 911. Our kitchen floor looked like a crime scene, to be honest. We have to take him back for a bandage change today, and we can’t leave him unattended in any way even when he’s sleeping until this bandage comes because of the risk of him ripping it off. Because the type of wound it was, a small piece of skin and tissue removed, and they opted not to cauterize it but are going with compression bandages for now hoping it will close up on it’s own…I don’t feel comfortable cleaning while Tony sleeps, which he’s honestly not doing much of because the bandage freaks him out that bad- I spent most of last night holding him.”
November 10, 2016. The sky had already darkened. I was wearing my Chief Bogo shirt, which was a little too big for me, and a black skirt baggy enough to have the most tenuous of hip grip. I was trimming Tony’s finger nails, which had to be done one small snip at a time with generous rests in between because he found the sensation so fearful and aversive. People always would recommend to do that in his sleep, but our little man could not sleep through a whisper much less such a snip at that time, and the one attempt I made to try that piece of advise was followed by many nights of him distrustfully refusing to sleep. I personally recommend each parent know their child, what they will tolerate and what won’t violate their trust.
So my practice was to always work on finding ways to help ease Tony’s fears and improve his tolerance of certain sensory stimuli. On this night, I was using my own personal nail trimmers because I couldn’t find the baby trimmers I usually used for him. The trimming edges were bigger and louder. He jerked, and it was such a tiny cut really…a tiny cut in the wrong place.
To me, it felt like blood was everywhere. My kiddo couldn’t tolerate the feeling of bandages on his skin in any way- I tried to get coban on the cut, but he fought frantically. I recognized there was no way I would be able to get the bleeding stopped on my own, so I called 911. We are blessed to live very close to a firehouse, and our local’s finest were at our home within moments.
One of them commented on the amount of blood. A couple of them helped bandage Tony while I held him on my lap on our yoga ball, tears raining down my face as we both cried. One of their crew started mopping the blood up off of our kitchen floor, and truly, this was a kindness above and beyond what I would have expected them to do. One of the firefighters noted that if I drove Tony in to the ER, he’d have the bandage ripped off within seconds and he’d be bleeding in the backseat unchecked all the way there. He recommended an ambulance ride with me holding him.
When we arrived about 15 minutes later at the ER, the EMT asked if Tony would walk in. I told him no, I didn’t think this was a good idea as I raised our little man up onto my shoulders. This gentleman looked thoughtfully back at me as we were walking in, like he was trying to figure out if I was completely crazy or if this kiddo of ours really was going to go berserk in ways he wouldn’t have thought possible. He didn’t know how intensely our son could react to medical environments.
“…so we have to go in this morning to get the compression bandage changed. It took 5 of us to hold him down in the ER just to get the one we’ve got on him, so they’ve recommended that we take him to his Dr’s office this morning to change it.”
Once the original ER bandage was taken off at his doctor’s office, I could see why he couldn’t sleep the night before. I was one of the five helping to hold him in the ER, and at that time, I was carrying a fair bit of muscle on my frame. We needed that many people, he was resisting with that much force. The ER team had put the bandage on very tight to keep him from pulling it off…and I am sure it is very difficult to bandage a thrashing kiddo twice the side of what would be expected for his age. I personally felt like the firefighter’s recommendation for our son to be sedated was a great idea, but obviously a decision was made by the ER medical team to handle things differently.
The original compression bandage they placed was too tight, and it had done significant damage to his skin. Our doctor applied the fresh bandage much looser, but Tony was in so much pain from the damage done by the first bandage that we needed six people to hold him down for the bandage change visit. The tissue damage caused by the initial bandaging took longer to heal than the cut that led us to the ER in the first place. My heart was shattered because, in part, a slip of my hand had helped set the stage for this very scary set of scenes.
In the four years that have followed, our little man has only gotten bigger and stronger. The importance of why we do what we do with medical desensitization work is geared at making necessary medical interventions safer for everyone and less scary for him.
A Note About an Anytime Trick for Problems with Treats
Because October is a time where many kiddos get extra candies, for those parents with loved ones who may have similar challenges, I’m going to give you a suggestion for a trick to try for calmly managing a treat or two (such as skittles) that may have been shoved up the nose. Our little man has managed skittles up both his nostrils at the same time, and just yesterday he shoved a yellow one up the right side. This only works of course if your loved one likes showers or baths (and Tony does these days), but try putting them in the shower and letting them play for a while, making a game of splashing small amounts of water on them. The humidity will start to dissolve the skittles, which in turn starts their slimy slide out of the nose. Often this is much easier and less stressful to manage for me than a trip somewhere to have the candies extracted.
