It started out a good weekend, long, but good.
We’ve had plans for months now to combine all four kids into one room, but a combination of being busy and lazy kept us from ever getting around to it. Well, my parents are getting their house ready for my grandmother moving in with them, this meant that we needed to get our act together and go and pickup Bella’s big girl bed and the boys’ bunk bed. Friday the kids cleaned, Saturday we made them actually clean (because I’m pretty sure Ryan and Bella just put everything under their beds and in their closet) and we got to rearranging the room and setting up the beds.
(Seriously – we own more beds than we could ever need. Two bunk bed, 2 twin beds, 1 crib, 1 toddler bed, 1 queen size bed, and 1 full size bed, this is why the new beds were at my parents’ house.)
(all that crud in front of the crib came from under Ryan and Bella’s beds)
(Bella’s big girl bed, until now she’d been using the crib – it converts to a toddler bed, not to be confused with the actual toddler bed we also have in storage.)
Sunday we all woke up in great moods. The kids slept on the old mattresses in what was Zach’s room, but is now the play room. We kept the tv in there, but we moved the Wii from the living room to there so that they can watch Netflix in there and play their video games. And of course, Mason is still in the bedroom with me, because even though we have set up the crib in what is now the sleep-room, he is nowhere near ready to move since he still wakes up several times a night to nurse.
John decided that the bunk bed was just a touch too wobbly, so Sunday afternoon he got it into his head to add braces to the posts to make them sturdier. I told him, no, wait, but he said, no, he could do it. Well, he broke the beds. Completely split and cracked on of the posts. This led to a fight on how we were going to have to rearrange the room around three twin beds and a crib. MY idea was to just block off the closet (which we don’t even use) and put one bed on each wall. John, bless his heart, said no, he didn’t want to block it and kept Bella’s bed and the bottom bunk where they were, then moved the crib so that it runs next to the bottom bunk with only a foot between them and the top bunk is half in the closet. It’s stupid. I’d take a picture but just going in that room makes me mad all over again. This led to a huge fight between John and myself.
This means that Ryan picked a really crappy time to do something so stupid.
(That is not a stock image of a crying Ryan, that’s from last night after he saw what exactly what it was that he did to himself.)
A little after the bedroom fight I am in the laundry room folding clothes with Mason when I hear John yelling “What the **** did you put in your mouth??” This has me worried, I mean why on earth is he yelling at one of the kids, and as I have Mason it’s not like this is another occurrence of Mason finding a marker and then chewing on it. So, I pick up Mason and rush from the front of the house to the back of it and I find John and Ryan standing in the bathroom. Ryan is just bawling and John looks ready to commit murder because apparently Ryan is not fessing up to whatever it was he was chewing on. I’m a little confused on how John knew Ryan was chewing on something, yet, he does not know what. Then Ryan turns to face me and I notice that his tongue is sticking out. I go and look and notice one whole side of his tongue is bright, bright red and that it has no taste buds. Zach and Bella start to come out of the play room and we push them back in, put Mason in his baby seat, and rush Ryan to the kitchen. John is yelling at him over and over “What we’re you chewing on Ryan!? You have to tell us! We can’t figure out what to do until you tell us!” and Ryan is just crying and screaming that his throat and tongue feel like they are burning. John, in a moment of great non-stupidity, makes him stand at the sink with a cup and the cold water running and rinse his mouth over and over. He then went to the back of the house to see if he can find what it was that Ryan had gotten in his mouth. He comes back a minute later even angrier, and looking just shocked, and yells at Ryan “PLEASE TELL ME THAT YOU WERE NOT STUPID ENOUGH TO HAVE BEEN CHEWING ON THIS ****ING BATTERY!”
Yep. A battery. He’d been chewing on a battery and managed to puncture it, and had ended up getting battery acid in his mouth. John goes to the Poison Control site to find out what we need to do, and I stayed in the kitchen with Ryan as he kept rinsing his mouth over and over all the while he’s gotten down to uncontrollable crying and whimpers of how bad it hurts. It was so bad he started gagging and hearing him John yells, “Whatever you do, do NOT let him throw up!” I am freaking out and trying very, very hard not to let Ryan see how freaked out I am. After a minute John gathers Ryan up and drives him 20ish minutes away to the closest hospital that our insurance covers, and I am left at home freaking out – and now crying hysterically – waiting for my mom to come get the other three kids and for my step-dad to drive me to the hospital.
I get there and the receptionist is like “I bet I know which kid you’re here for.”
They examined his mouth, tongue, and throat. Then they x-rayed his throat and chest (to be sure he didn’t swallow another battery and just didn’t want to own up to it. After about two hours Ryan's tongue has started to swell some where it was burned (pictured above) and the doctor comes in and says that his throat and mouth are fine to go home, that the burning was just slight. His tongue however, will take a while to heal but that there really isn’t anything that they can do for it. To give him Tylenol for pain as needed – absolutely NO Aleve in case any of the acid did get to his stomach – and directions to only eat soft, non-salty foods until it has healed some more.
(a nurse gave him a new car to play with so that he wouldn’t be so bored since the tylenol kicked in and he said that it didn’t hurt as much anymore.)
Now, if you are wondering WHY he was chewing on a battery…
Ryan is a chewer and always has been. I’m pretty sure that most of the time he doesn’t even realize that he is doing it. He just chews on whatever he is holding if he is sitting and not doing anything (like yesterday sitting and watching Netflix). Today he thankfully already had a doctor’s appointment for a medicine check up since we thought his ADHD medicine wasn’t being as effective and I brought it up to his doctor. Because last night as we were thinking on it we realized that the chewing just started back up about the same time we noticed that his medicine wasn’t helping as much. We always figured that it tied in with his ADHD as a type of fidgeting. Well, when we into the doctor he followed up on the burns and when I asked him about the chewing (as Ryan is sitting there chewing on a corner of his shirt) and Ryan announces that he does NOT chew on things and we point out that he was JUST doing it, his doctor said that on rare occasions some children with ADHD do develop chewing as an obsessive behavior, and that the medicine dosage should help, but that we should also stock up on some sunflower seeds and give them to him as we notice him doing it.
And this is why it’s lucky that all my children made it to Monday.
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