The Mom Who Cried Wolf

Here's your scenario:

You're 40 minutes from Co-op Preschool starting AT YOUR HOUSE. You are all ready, except the house needs to be cleaned. Big kids are off to school and little kids are dressed.



Oh wait, big kids aren't off to school. Gabe has just shown up at your door, bawling, with two stranger-moms, who found him after his big bike accident. (Apparently, it's not a good idea to have your lunch bag swinging from your front handle bars, as it can get wedged between the tire and the bike and cause your tire to completely stop and throw you over the front of the bike). He is bleeding from a big scrape on his chin and seems to be in a lot of pain. You thank the nice moms who walked him home and carried his bike and you bring him inside.



You give him Tylenol and clean the cut and hug him and then you tell him to lay down and try and relax. But he keeps crying. Well, yelling, actually. Gabe howls really annoyingly loud when he's in pain. You, frankly, get kind of annoyed (it's just a chin scrape after all) and tell him to settle down. Besides you have preschool and you'll just see how he feels in 2 hours when it's done.

When you head back upstairs, to your room to do your hair, you watch him (on your bed) continue, 30 minutes after the accident, writhe in pain, holding his jaw and saying he can't open his mouth. It kind of makes you start to cry.

But you pride yourself on not overreacting to illness or accidents--your kids are tough and, after all, you know when they're really in need of medical help. You don't want to be the kind of mom who Cancels Preschool For No Reason And Makes The Doctor Get An X-Ray When There's Nothing Wrong! Right?

So what do you do? Seriously. What would you do?



This is what I did:

I called a Preschool Mom, told her we'd reschedule for Friday morning and asked her, through tears, to call the other moms.

I then called the doctor and they had me come in.



When I get there, the doctor doesn't seem to think anything's wrong (and I start to feel annoyed/stupid that I brought him in when, logically, there couldn't be anything REALLY wrong from a chin scrape), but then she felt something at the point of pain and decides to send him to X-ray.

We went and got the X-ray. Gabe is, of course, at this point, not crying at all but still can't open his mouth. (He swears he's lost a tooth, but when asked to count with his tongue the teeth on the opposing side, he realizes there are the same number of teeth on BOTH sides. Phew.)

We got home and he asks if he can go to school. I say "Um, no, we should wait and find out if your jaw is broken"--which OF COURSE I don't really want, except the little part of me that wants this to be a big medical deal, so I don't feel dumb for the uproar I caused all morning.

They call. The jaw is fine.

Fine. Totally fine.

Now I'm officially Mom Who Cancels Preschool For No Reason And Makes The Doctor Get An X-Ray When There's Nothing Wrong!

Here's Gabe and Chin-in-Question, who really was/is in a lot of pain and can only eat yogurt and soup for dinner, because he really can't open his mouth.

Seriously, I hate this dilemma. How much of a "deal" do you make of injuries, illnesses, owies, complaints? When are you overreacting? When are you neglectful? Ryan's always telling me to take them in, or call someone, when I think they're fine. Which then makes me feel neglectful and selfish, but really I just think I have a lot of experience with doctors, what they can and can't do to help and with my kids and how each one reacts to pain, etc.




So anyway, today I really hurt my reputation as Mom Who Only Reacts To True Medical Emergencies. I'll have to ignore a few ear infections and stitch-needing cuts to bring my average back up.