Monday, April 6, 2015

This is a story all about a boy, a hook and his passion for fishing

In the midst of the Easter preparation, with house guests a plenty, Bashful heads to the dock to do some early morning fishing...

Because of the number of people at my house, and the number of people that were planning to eat Easter dinner at my house directly after church, I was super prepared today.  I had my cake made, my eggs cut, my hams cooking, my veggies and potatoes in the crock pots heating.

I actually, by 10:15 am, sitting on the lanai drinking coffee and reading a book, when C. H. (Captain Hook, as we will affectionately call him for the remainder of this post) calls to me from the dock..."MOM, MOM, I have a hook in my head."    My initial response when he called to me was casual disbelief, shadowed by the dwarf's propensity for drama in all areas of his life. 

I yelled for him to stay put and I went to get the Prince.  The Prince, who did not think that he was needed, tried to get me to handle the situation.  However, on the off chance there really was a hook in his head, for any of you that know me, know that I am not so good with blood, or wounds, or really any symptoms that an injured or sick person would exhibit. As I am asking C.H. to stay put, and not move, he begins walking up from the water, rod in his hand, the line slack and the hook and lore attached to his head,  sort of looking like a zombie, I figure I certainly need the Prince to handle this situation.

C.H. arrives in front of the prince and the Prince cuts the line, they drop the pole on the porch, and head into the bathroom with a pair of needle nose pliers.  I scurry around looking for peroxide and cotton balls, to clean the wound after the hook is removed.  As all this is happening, C.H. is beginning to slowly panic about having a hook in his head.



Rather quickly the Prince assesses that this treble hook is firmly lodged in the dwarf's head, and that because of the barb, it is not going to come out at home with a pair of needle nose pliers.

While the Prince cuts off the lure,  I grab my purse, and the dwarf, and head to the closest emergency room.  Now as we drive, C.H. is beginning to slide into full panic mode.  For those of you that know him already, you are aware that he struggles with many of the easy things in life, so as you can imagine this "hook in the head"  situation now has his very active imagination in overdrive. 

Some of my favorite phrases of the drive: Please remember these phrases are being delivered multiple times, in rapid succession, with what sounds like a mouth full of marbles, as he cries and has snot running down his face.... 

" I just wish we had never moved here.  If we stayed in PA, I would have never hooked my head."
" I need dad, you can't help me."
" Can you just let it in there, it only burns a little and only hurts when I do this, as he shakes his head back and forth"
"I am never fishing again!'
"I am filing all the barbs off my hooks!" 
" I hate Florida. Florida is the reason there is a hook in my head."
" I know that the doctor is going to have to cut my brains out."
" I hate needles, there are going to be needles, I don't want needles, can you just leave it in?"

We arrive at the ER, and are admitted quickly, thanks to the young man that helped us, noticing that C.H. was special, and was struggling with obsessively freaking out about the unknown which he was claiming would be in part; the use of needles and scalpels and would require him to be put to sleep.

Several times staff or other visitors to the ER, stopped to tell C.H. that he was doing a great job, and that they knew someone or they themselves had at one time a hook lodged in part of their body.  Knee, hand, foot,  although no one that we ran into had ever had a hook in their head... which did eventually allow him to stop focusing on himself and think of others for a small bit.  We were shown to the ER bed, and the first nurse comes to us to access the situation with Kenneth quickly returning to full panic mode as he swears that while she is looking at the hook and moving his hair, that she is going to give him a shot, that she is trying to rip out the hook, and that she is going to push it in further.   I attempt to answer her questions, all the while having C.H. focus on me, and breathe while keeping up with the flowing snot from his nose as he begins crying again.   She is kind and attempts to reassure him, that he will be fine and that she really is just looking, but now his newest fear is that she is going to shave a bald spot on his head, and we go back to the few earlier phrases on repeat mode, adding in, "I can't have my hair cut out, it will never grow back in, I will have a stupid bald spot forever. "

In an attempt when the nurse leaves to reduce some of his panic, I take this photo, and show it to him.  Explaining that yes they may have to shave a section of his head to work on the removal, it would just be a little area because the hook is small, and that we can get him a hair cut so that it is all the same length on Monday.   He seems to calm down a bit more when he notices that the hook is indeed smaller than the hook in his head that his mind has created, and so we settle in to wait for the next step.

The nurses and I have a couple conversations about his special needs, his fixation on the hook and what he has imagined will happen and how we can transport him to the room for removal, without him seeing any of the "tools of the trade".  They bring him a cocktail of pain relievers, which he thinks is sleeping medicine, and immediately begins to act like he is falling asleep.  So that is fine, I will take it, it was calming and restored some sort of normalcy to him, helped the panic subside a bit and overall created a calmer dwarf.

We waited about 30 minutes for the pain meds to kick in, and the nurses came to take us to the private room so that they could do the removal of the hook.   Upon arrival to the room, they brought a pillow case to him, and had him put his arms behind him and in the pillow case.  This "merman" contraption, was a great source of comic relief for several minutes, until C.H. realized that he could not get his arms out, and was basically in a straight jacket of sorts, lying face down on the bed, ready for the nurse to remove the hook.

The procedure was actually pretty quick.  The staff was great at their job!  One nurse talked to him, while I held his hand through the pillow case, and rubbed the back of his leg, still laughing about him being a merman, as the second nurse injected him with the numbing medication.  He never saw that needle coming, but he sure felt it.  While he was still having some anxiety about the needle, the fast acting medication and the nurse were able to remove the offending hook,



and begin cleaning the area around the wound.  Just as he was feeling the sensation of the cleansing solution on his head, one quick shot from the staple gun, and we were finished.


Phew.  Still a bit concerned about the noise behind his head, he focused on sitting up and removing his pillow case, and it was a good 20 minutes until he wondered if there was something still in his head.  At which time we were able to tell him about his staple, to keep the wound shut.  Of  course that lead to another several moments of high anxiety as he was concerned about how big the staple remover would be that would "rip" that from his head in a few days...

I am convinced that there will always be something for that dwarf to be anxious about.  His mind is a hot mess of over imagination, brought on by his lack of ability to process things, and too much influence from outside forces like television and movies.  A melting pot for anxiety and stress to be sure.

So this is the tale of our Easter morning 2015.  Perhaps I should hide some eggs next year, or create a scavenger hunt, or fill some baskets and hide them.  Maybe I should have let them sleep in later, or had them working on their chores.... I was teasing C.H. that he sure picked a great way to get out of going to Easter Sunday services...

You really Can't Make this Stuff Up! 

PS- Mr, I am never going to fish again, was on the dock by 4PM.