Day 6

This was the day of my first really big panic. The morning went well enough with a quick, little introductory visit to PT and then a horrendously long, but typical, wait upstairs for a five-minute check-up with the doctors (may their souls be blessed for the number of folks they are able to help...and may my soul be blessed with more patience to bear up underneath the hours spent waiting, and waiting, and waiting). I found out at the appointment that I had the thumbs up to give Hannah her first shower since surgery.

So we went home and let Grandma watch all the kids while we got down to business. I told Hannah it would be great, wonderful, and all things good and glorious. She TOTALLY didn't buy into it. Pin-cleaning panic set in. The girl has 12 metal bars the width of a pencil that anchor her lengthening device into her leg. Where the pins go in has a high, and, according to all parents, inevitable, risk of infection. Every day the parent has to put specially made sponges or wrap guaze around the pins to protect them. At every change of the sponges, we were taught that we could clean the site with q-tips and some saline being careful to wipe debris away from the wound and to change out q-tips at every messy swipe. But we were also told that it was found that doing the care daily didn't really decrease the chance of infection. So what we really needed to do was just to watch for gunk and take that away if we saw it.

So as I was saying, little thing was panicking at the thought of pin care and she wailed through the removal of every sponge (rightfully so as some of 'em stuck pretty good and her Mom had no idea what she was doing or what move of hers might cause another shriek). I kept trying to talk Hannah through it using as much reason as my reasoning brain could create, speaking betimes with much (too much) firmness.

I got the sponges off and noticed some blood trickling down her leg. And my brain said, "Ah! Is that supposed to happen? Ah!" And I quickly swiped the blood away which blood quickly came down again. So I got the girl in the shower lickity-split and started running water over her legs so the blood would go away that I was beginning to panic over.

Oh how the tables love to turn on a moralizing Mama.

When I got Hannah out of the shower and started looking over her pins I saw all sorts of gunk - but was it healthy scabbing or that demon infection? I went at the pins holding my q-tips like a pacifist pointing a gun. I dabbed here and there, then over-dabbed, panicked, looked around desperately, studied the pin some more, panicked, felt mad that I ever got myself here in the first place when we could be at home eating ice-cream and playing hide-and-go-seek, decided that I'd infected every single one of her pins on my first try at pin care, tried to relax and dab some more, then panicked, put her back in her wheel chair, covered her with a towel, and waited for a clear thought to come into my head. After a few minutes of nothing coming and her looking like a girl who'd just done a polar bear challenge, I put sponges back on, got her dressed and pushed her into the room with her siblings like everything was perfectly normal.

About then Dan called. Poor boy gets an earful when I'm in panic mode. So I let him know that I'd basically destroyed the universe and he was like, "Well you can call the doctors office." And I was like, "I know," all huffy and grumpy because I'd already thought about it and didn't want to do it. "Or you could ask another Mom." And even more annoyed I grumbled, "Yeeeeees, I know. Okay. I know." But for some reason knocking on some Mom's door in a pin care panic felt so uncomfortable to me. I mean why couldn't my husband just walk through the phone, look at the pins, take full responsibility for it all and say, "Right as rain. Just perfect." Is that too much for a girl to ask? Just some tiny walking through the phone"ness."

Being rather practiced with my panic/grumpy state he calmly wished me luck and on my way.

I had to go downstairs to get something from the kitchen after I was done talking to Dan. When I walked into the lobby, there was a Mom and Grandma wheeling their boy through the hall. Tender mercy. I unabashedly splattered my problem at their feet and the Mom quickly gathered me up, reassured me, told me what I needed to do, and dialed my panic button almost all the way back to off. She told me to shower Hannah really well. Shower her and shower her and shower her and pretty much leave the pins alone.

That was just what I wanted to hear. I love hearing what I want to hear.

And the rest of the day Hannah and I had peace. Three cheers for all the good people that work with the silly girl that I am.