A boy, a bike, and a.....CRASH!

Well, I promised that this blog would reveal real stuff in the life of a family full of boys, and here you have it, in its raw and unaltered form. WARNING: This blog may be graphic in nature. JUST KIDDING!

Before I began this blog, we had visited the emergency room twice with our boys. The first was with Vance when he was about 2, and he had fallen off Austin’s loft bed ladder, split his lip, and knocked out his two front teeth. The second time was last year when Luke fell off his dirt bike and cut open his chin (it was nasty, I must say). Well, the DeShong boys have done it again. The record for hospital visits is as follows:

Austin - ZERO
Luke- ONE
Vance - TWO

Vance is now in the lead following a brutal fight with the concrete Saturday on a family bike ride, consequently, on Dave’s birthday. He began a small downhill with the rest of us, and for reasons still inconclusive, “ate it at the bottom”, for lack of better terms. I was behind him, so when I got to the bottom of the hill (a hill that he has ridden down before a few times), I was shocked to find that he was literally gushing blood out of his mouth. At this point, we couldn’t even locate what was causing him to bleed. He was hysterical, to say the least, and the hysterics continued as we carried him, dripping blood everywhere, to the truck. We loaded the bikes up, drove home to drop off the boys and get Vance’s medical card, and all the while, Vance is still screaming in pain. By the time we were about 10 minutes into the drive down to Panorama City, he calmed down. I know he was in a lot of pain. Poor guy!

I put Vance in a wheelchair, as he wasn’t able to walk very well, and wheeled him into the hospital, where they saw him almost immediately. It took a while just to clean him up enough to evaluate where the problems were. The doctor discovered he had bitten through his top lip in two places (not through and through-GOOD ), his two top front permanent teeth that have yet to come in are now exposed due to the top layers of the gums being sheered off (I know, you just cringed with that one), and his chin was badly scraped up as well. His lips were both as fat as balloons. He looked so mangled! So they stitched up his lip, and Vance was a TROOPER. I have never seen him so compliant and calm. Especially since they had to give him one of those nasty numbing shots in the lip in about 5 places. When the doctor apologized for the long and painful shot and asked him if that had hurt, he replied and I quote “Not a bit.” It was at this moment that I wondered how I missed someone exchanging my child for another. Vance usually pitches a fit over the slightest injury. The only thing I can attribute his calm and patient spirit to is God. I had talked with Vance as we were waiting initially for the doctor to come in, and we were discussing how God was in control of everything, how nothing happens by accident, and how God was with us taking care of us. Not to mention, God had given me peace, clarity of mind, and an absence of panic or worry. This comes from a deep knowledge of who God is, that He is in control, and that nothing happens outside of His plan for our lives. So I guess this spilled over to Vance, so that he felt trusting in God, Mom, and in the doctors. I am so thankful and proud of my little boy’s composure.

OK, so that was the face. There’s more. Yes. Really.

The doctors finished stitching him up, and began to just thoroughly check over all the other parts of his body. She ordered X-rays for his jaw, to make sure that nothing was broken with such a hard hit to his face. When she checked his legs, she found his ankle to be bruised, scraped, and swollen, so she ordered X-rays for that as well. So, off to X-ray we went for about 30 minutes. Back to the doctor to read the results. Back to X-day for pictures of his lower leg, now. Conclusion: A walking cast and little tiny crunches. Yes, you read that right “crunches”. That is Vance’s word for “crutches” She wasn’t convinced that his leg was completely normal, although the X-rays showed no visible breaks. So the poor guy, armed with a fat lip, a walking cast, and crutches, is back home now, after 4 hours at the hospital, once again saying “You should see the other guy!”

He is in great spirits, back to himself, and taking it all in stride. He has even demonstrated to us how to "run" in his cast. GREAT!!! He is enjoying the spoils that came from a trip to the market for popsicles and pudding. And then my sister showed up yesterday afternoon and showered him with gifts like it was Christmas! She is so thoughtful, and knows just how to distract him!

It could have been much worse, and we are so grateful to God for his mercy. And the boys are still so young, we could have a lot of this ahead of us. When we were at the hospital, I saw the doctor who had stitched up Luke when we were there. He recognized me and remembered Luke. When you recognize the doctors in the emergency room, you really know you are a mother of boys. Another funny thing: When we were waiting to go back in to see the doctor and read the results of the X-ray, there was a couple in the waiting room, who, after looking at Vance, turned to me and asked “Bike or skateboard?”. They had boys, too.