Pain Tolerance

Pearls and Dreams

I want my sons pain tolerance. I don't want the other sensory issues he has to deal with that gives him his high pain tolerance, but I want his pain tolerance.

Wednesday, during PE, another child reached his arm forward and Benjamin's open eye was in the way. He got scratched.

It was a bit red, looked like allergy eyes, and he said it itched. He wasn't complaining, he thought it was funny. So ... I figured we'd watch it.

Thursday morning, he got up and his eye was matted shut, and the red was a little angrier, but, it still looked ... well ...so so, I figured I'd watch it and if it wasn't better by today, I'd take him to the doctor.

I sent him to school. I went to my doctor's appointment & then went to do my sweat equity at Habitat. I got home at 4:30 and looked at Benjamin's eye and went WOW! His eye was swollen and it was oozing and looked BAD.

So, I called our clinic to see if they had after hours clinic. (we haven't had to utilize that, so I didn't know.) They said no and suggested going to the ER and use the urgent care center. So, we did.

He told the triage nurse that it didn't hurt, but it itched. The triage nurse looked at me like Bj was nuts. I couldn't understand it either! So, given the severity of what we were looking at, the nurse put a 4 down on pain so it would get taken seriously & quickly.

We went back out to wait a while and finally got called back. (finally ... ha! It was all of 45 minutes, if you'd like to slap me for saying finally on a 45 minute wait in an ER waiting room, you're more than welcome to, I know how absurd that statement is).
We got taken back there, and a nurse who's known us for 15 years was there, and followed us back. (she wasn't our nurse *grin*)
His nurse did a vision check ... BAD BAD BAD.
Was he wearing his glasses? NOOOOOOoooooooo should he have been YESSssssssss (was he when the kid poked him in the eye? NOoooooooooooo)

So, we went into the exam room and the nurse starts to tease Benjamin about the eye & the glasses. I reminded her of them having pick orange plastic out of my eye on 4th of july when Bj threw a plastic airplane at me and hit me in the eye. The nurse started laughing and said "come to think of it, we've had all of your family in her with scratced eyse because of him haven't we?"

Oh yea! Me ... 3 times, my husband 2 times, my other son 2 times. This is Bj's first corneal abrasion.

So the doctor comes in. He's annoyed with me since it didn't happen that day and it's that bad. I'm trying to explain to him that on Wednesday Benjamin said it didn't hurt & it didn't look bad until AFTER school. It wasn't until Benjamin said "it still doesn't hurt!" That the doctor finally backed off. After that, he got a lot nicer to me and wasn't so rude.

He stuck the orange tape stuff on his eye and then looked at it in the black light and showed me what was there ... a HUGE scratch. Bigger than any scratch I'd ever seen. It was bigger than probably all the scratches he'd given us combined. It was huge! The kid must have caught it with his whole fingernail!

So, he sent us home with antibiotic ointment, said to keep him out of school today. Benjamin spent last night with my mom and today with my mom. Today is my mom's 66th birthday. So he had a lot of fun keeping her company & relieved me from a lot of guilt from being overly busy today.

He came home after school time and his eye looks like it did after school on Wednesday night, we're going to let him go to the 5th & 6th grade club activity at church tonight. A lock in from 6:30 to 11:30 ... it's the last blow out before the 6th graders get promoted to youth group (gulp) in a couple of weeks. Technically, since he had to miss school, he shouldn't be allowed to go to that ..but ... I'm thinking since he's had the antibiotics for over 24 hours ... and it's the last event ... it's just not fair to make him miss.

Today, I had an appointment with my eating disorder therapist & then had to go get my monthly blood test ... I'm 3 weeks late for that (whoops!). I also had my cholesterol re checked. It was 310 with bad cholesterol at 232 in November and it was 230 total in April when I had my stress test.
So ... we'll see if it's come down any more. If it hasn't, then they're going to up my Vytorin.

Then, I went back to Habitat for 3.5 more hours bringing my total to ... 286 of 450.