Sliver, revisited

I wanted to put this little bit into the original post about the sliver, but it just seemed like it needed it's very own special day of attention.



A little background: Many of you know Benjamin and his threshold for pain. It's virtually non-existant. Any injury of any sort is a major break down with crying, and a lot of drama. Maybe it stems from the first two weeks of his life, when he had jaundice and I had to take him to the hospital daily to be pricked and have his blood tested. Who knows. Last winter, he got a sliver in his foot while playing outside with his cousins. It was actually a pine needle that went straight up, into the ball of his foot. In order for us to get it out, three adults had to hold him down and a fourth tried to dig it out. There was a lot of wailing, knashing of teeth, kicking and screaming. It was so difficult Pat finally called a friend of hers, who is a nurse, and asked her to come over and see what she could do. It was a nightmare. I just can't convey in words the situation.



It took a long time, and he cried, and the whole house had to listen to the screams of him "needing a little rest," or "IS THAT A NEEDLE?" or "WHAT ARE TWEEZERS?" It was so ridiculous it was almost funny. The nurse finally decided she had done what she could, and so we packed up the operating room (Pat's front living room) and all had a major rest.



We didn't get all the pine needle out. A couple of weeks later, we talked about it, and decided that Daddy would have another try and that Benjamin had to be very brave or we'd have to go to the doctor who would just use a knife and cut him open. And Benjamin was very brave, and Adam used the "push real hard" technique and popped out a little sliver about an eighth of an inch long. Which is huge for a five year old.



So, back to Adam's sliver. After Adam yanked it out, he called Benjamin over to look at it. Benjamin said, "Your sliver didn't hurt as much as mine did. And it's just a little bigger than mine was," and walked away. I guess it didn't hurt as much because there was no crying.