Surgery at 5: A milestone I shall never forget!

17th August 2014

School opened 5 days ago. 

Just as I was thanking my stars that we had a relatively uneventful summer vacation this year; with only some bleeding from a torn toenail, a couple of small cuts on one leg resulting from dashing into a cyclist passing by and a cut on the head from trying to perform stunts while scootering; all that thankfulness came crashing down with one dramatic, panic stricken and blood spilled dash to the ER in an ambulance, admissions into KKH, a minor surgery under anaesthesia followed by 24hours in the hospital under observation. 

V1 slipped and fell after trying to climb the top of a tunnel connecting two slides in our condominium playground. The fall from a height and the impact cut his tongue so deeply, he was sent from the ER to the operation theatre and needed to be put under general anaesthesia and had a surgeon put 11 stitches in his tongue to stitch the gashes. 

Still, the horror of the experience notwithstanding, I have to admit the guy was a trooper - he was less freaked out than his parents; never lost his patience even though he had to wait for 5 hours before he could go into surgery and was given painkillers that blocked out his pain; sat quietly on his bed, spitting out blood and saliva into a bag; nodded sanely when the doctor explained the IV needle to him and then barely whimpered when it was put in; and back in his room, even tried to use his raised hospital bed as a slide to pass time.

He is also most definitely the only 5 year old I know who called the nurse and asked her to put the IV needle back in after it was removed, so he could impress his brother who was visiting him in the hospital! 

So the surgeons at KKH sent him back home with a bravery certificate (which has made brother V2 extremely angry and envious). 

I would have probably given him a certificate of bravery myself had I not been caught up in the emotional turmoil, the helplessness and horror of watching an IV drip go into my tiny 5yr old and having to carry him and lay him on the operating table and holding his hand till the anaesthesia started working! 

Right now he is back home, on a liquid diet, unable to talk or swallow and is still up to no good. 

While a part of me is waiting to yell at him when he is better, I am really thankful, because his injury could have been worse had it not been a soft playground floor. I am hoping this trip to the hospital will teach him a thing or two about being a little less reckless and a little more careful! 

However, judging by his attempts to jump out of his hospital bed a few hours after his surgery, I am not sure if that lesson has sinked in or ever will. 

The bravery certificate that V1 is immensely proud of and V2 is very unhappy about :)

Update : 2 weeks later

V1 is recovering well (notwithstanding another scare last week when he fell down in school and cut his lip and had to be rushed for another checkup to see if the fall had affected his stitches) and his stitches have more or less disappeared. He can talk and eat his favourite fruits again.

Any hope I had of the fall getting some some sense into V1's head, has long disappeared after I found it has been having exactly the opposite effect and has increase his Coolness Quotient among the other kids in our condominium and in his class. Each day V1 came back from school, he told me how other kids (even girls who always ignored him) wanted to see his stitches. The same goes for all the kids of our neighbours who have been dropping in to visit him - the ride in the ambulance is one of the hottest topics of discussion and V1 has become the resident expert, being the only one to have seen the inside of one! Trust a 5year old to find the silver lining in every cloud there is!