Is There a Doctor in the House?

There has been a lot of discussion and controversy about the differences between boys and girls.  Experts debate at length over the left brain/right brain thing, verbal ability vs. math ability, expressing vs. holding back emotions, and social maturity.  In the end, there are just four universal differences.   Girls give out those piercing shrieks that penetrate right to your core.   Boys drink right out of open juice or milk containers in the refrigerator.  Girls frequently change their clothes.  Boys frequently make trips to the emergency room.  These differences require different parenting skills.  My friends who have raised girls have a vast store of knowledge about nail polish colors, ear piercing, tying scarves and hair ornaments. After raising two boys, I know all there is to know about sprains, breaks, gashes and blood.

Not counting the usual toddler borks and dings, which always happened right before it was time to take the family Christmas picture, we had our first introduction to the big leagues of injury when David was three.  He and Paul were playing what David proudly called “rough soccer” when he tripped and split open his chin on the sandbox railroad ties.  Although David insisted we should just fix it with Vaseline, his chin launched our maiden voyage to Children’s Hospital.

When John was three, his broken collarbone became the Injury for All Seasons.  Late one Saturday night in the spring, he fell out of bed while we were hosting one of our big pizza bashes. David went home with our guests while we went to Children’s Hospital, where our tomato, onion, garlic and red wine breath made us pariahs in the waiting room.  John healed up in time for a summer visit with my parents at the beach, fell out of bed on our last morning there and was back in the collarbone harness by afternoon.  After six weeks, we thought that was the end of the story – and it was, for awhile.

Three years later, in a fall backyard football game, John came out from under a pile of bodies holding his shoulder.  After six weeks of healing, we had our final visit with Dr. Crawford, the head of orthopedics at Children’s.  Dr. Crawford was a soft spoken, tall black man –when he sat down and held John between his knees, his kneecaps came up to John’s ears.  After I had voiced my concerns about re-injury and asked about restrictions on activities, Dr. Crawford looked John in the eye and said, “John, boy, don’t let them keep you down.”  Then he turned to me and added, “We’re open 24 hours a day.”  You can bet I watched John like a hawk all winter.

To his credit, John also won the prize for the Worst Injury That Almost Happened. He was new to biking with training wheels but naturally joined the other kids riding their bikes down the neighbor’s driveway, a hill which banked sharply to the right.  We watched from the back porch as John clattered and teetered his way down the hill, missed the curve, ran off the driveway and disappeared over a stone retaining wall.  Somehow he pulled off this 9.5 rated stunt with nothing more than a bloody nose.

During the grade school years, here is what I found out first hand.  If a kid is playing hide and seek and runs into the corner of a brick house, he gets stitches.  If a kid tries riding with no hands, falls off his bike and hits a tree trunk, he gets stitches.  If a kid is at summer camp on a farm and tangles his arm in barbed wire, he gets stitches and a scar that looks like the souvenir of a fight with Captain Hook.

At times, I wondered if my boys were just accident prone, but they fit right in with our neighborhood.  Two of the more noteworthy injuries were a golf club to the knee and an arrow to the lower lip. (No, the arrow was not shot
out of a bow; it was being pulled out of a target.)  From the true confessions I’ve heard recently, it’s amazing we weren't picking BB's out of the kids as well.  Luckily, my next door neighbor, a nurse, was even calmer about these mishaps than I was.  Her philosophy was if it isn’t bleeding too badly and if you can walk on it, even with a limp, just go back outside and play.

Once boys are in high school, you might think the medical emergencies would be over, but you would be mistaken.  While John was allegedly studying for an AP exam, he tried a Pete Townshend windmill guitar maneuver (see Wikipedia), broke the ceiling fan light and nearly severed his finger.  We were at the Lake with

several families and came back from an adult bike ride to an eerie quiet.  The kids were all huddled in the docked boat wondering how to tell us that David, who had been using the water balloon launcher to launch rocks, had nailed himself in the foot at close range. One Sunday we were hosting a neighborhood open house. Just as the pianist arrived and we were setting out food and drinks, John showed up missing most of the skin on his left side – a mountain biking smash up.  During a family bike ride the weekend before David’s wedding, someone zigged when they should have zagged; and David wound up with a dislocated shoulder.

The last major injury occurred a few years ago – another biking accident (is there a pattern here?) and a

two-fer as well.  David was in town for Mothers’ Day weekend, and he and Paul started off with a bike ride in Indiana.  I was at home wondering where they were when I heard the car in the garage.  David skulked in limping (sent by Paul, like the canary in the coal mine) to tell me what had happened.  Here are some prompts – you fill in the blanks: dogs, rear end collision, blood, mangled bikes, four mile walk, two 1000 capsule bottles of Advil, frozen peas and ice bags.   I can only hope that will prove to be the final emergency of its kind, but who knows? As Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

A lot of people (mostly parents of girls) insist raising boys is easier than raising girls.  I say it depends on whether you do better with trauma or drama.  I wonder what medical adventures await  David and Megan.  I am contributing a collarbone sling and crutches to their family first aid kit, and Paul is a pro at removing stitches.