#5 wanted me to hold him today. It was the first time for me to get him out of his bed since his surgery. He has a band-aid down his chest that covers his incision that looks like an over-sized band-aid that you'd get out of any first-aid kit lying around your house. It comforted me when I saw it for the first time. Like maybe I didn't really turn my child over to somebody who cut through his chest down to his heart. Maybe they didn't stop his heart from beating then slit it open and tug at a ring of tissue that was choking his aorta until it separated from the walls of the his ventricle, cauterizing, slicing and stitching all along the way. A resident doctor excitedly told my husband that he saw #5's perfect mitral valve with his own eyes. How could that be possible when all #5 has on his chest is a band-aid? An intentional wound like that requires something a lot more grisly I think. My only suggestion to the hospital at this point would to be to get gigantic band-aids with the Backyardigans on them. I might think they put something like that on my boy just to give him the pleasure of an imagined injury.
But like I was saying, #5 wanted me to hold him today. Being careful to not tug at his chest tube, IV lines, electrode leads or EKG leads I lifted him awkwardly out of his bed and sat us in a rocking chair. He seemed three times bigger than usual. It was like I was trying to hold my nine-year old in my lap. His body was too rigid, his movement too limited for him to curl into me like he does. In a whimper he asked me if he could get back in bed because it was too ouchy. So later when the nurse told him he'd need to stand up on a scale in thirty minutes he told me with a trembling lip that he didn't want to. When I told him again that even though it was hard we needed to do it, with a bit more spark he said, "No!" his big brown eyes even bigger with worry. There was no screaming or crying, just resolution. When the time came, though, he meekly allowed the nurse to scoop him up and place his shaky little legs on the scale. Tentatively he pushed through his knees down onto his feet and grasped onto the rails on the scale looking serious and resigned. When he was safely back in bed with his blue cover pulled up underneath his arms and my iPhone with Backyardigans playing in his hand, he ignored all our praise staring as hard as he could at Tasha, Uniqua, Pablo, Tyrone and Austin. He didn't stand up on the scale for the pat-on-the-back, he did it because already at three, as far as I can see, he is a duty-doer.
My kids are a constant revelation to me.
How I love them.
No comments:
Post a Comment