black eye, day 2

How I got my black eye, a multiple choice quiz:

A. Some bad guys were trying to steal my mommy's purse. My spider-sense started tingling and my bat ears heard her cries. I raced over to the alley, super-fast, in my snowboots, and went all ninja turtle on the guys. I got this black eye, but you should see the bad guys!

B. My big brother finally got sick of my $#@* and popped me one, right in the eye.

C. We were playing outside at L's house and one of my friends was swinging a plastic bucket full of water. Right as L said "D, stop swinging that--" CRACK-- WAAAAH! It hit me right in the eye.

D. I was just trying to help the guys putting in our concrete patio! But jumping off the flatbed truck and backhoe isn't so much helpful as it is dangerous.

E. I am trying to look like my really cool older cousin, except he has 2 black eyes, from his broken nose!

_________

While all these are plausible guesses, the correct answer is C. It happened yesterday afternoon at L's house. She called me, very worried, and asked me to come right over. Now, L has 3 kids of her own, and has been a childcare provider for probably 15 years. I would think that she has seen it all! But she was really alarmed by how quickly his eye swelled- by the time she grabbed him and carried him inside the house to get some ice, it had swollen shut and was the size of a baseball! That's when she called me.

I called the pediatrician on the way, to find out if I should bring him there or to the hospital. I was a little put-off by their response: that soft tissue injuries like this really swell up, and we should just put ice on it and give Motrin, and when the swelling goes down we can better gauge the extent of the injury.

But of course that advice was correct. The swelling had gone down considerably already. I gave him some hugs and kisses and then we decided that he could stay there and rest with ice for a couple more hours, and I went back to work.

I took him in to the peditrician at the end of the day- it was definitely worth my $15 co-pay to have a professional check it out. She said that it was the worst shiner she'd ever seen! But she felt all around the bones to make sure nothing was broken/chipped, and checked his eye motion, and said she thought he'd be ok- just keep administering ice when we can. (Whoa, I thought I might toss my lunch when she started poking around that swollen area.)

Yeah, unfortunately Thomas seems to think this is kind of cool. He told Bill last night "I love this black eye."