Tuesday, July 1, 2008

A Nose by any other Name, Still swells when you hit it

So I was playing the organ Sunday night during church. We have a shake-hands song where the congregation sings the first verse, then the instruments play while everyone shakes hands and then we sing the last verse. When everyone starts shaking hands, I start concentrating really hard on staying with the piano. It's a little more difficult when the song leader isn't keeping time for us. Once in a while someone comes up to me and wants to shake hands while I'm playing. Our piano player can somehow shake hands or carry on a conversation and never miss a beat. Me? I can either play or talk, but not both. Sometimes not either. So I'm playing and focusing and one of my boys comes up to talk to me. When they do that they usually just want to say "I love you" which I can answer as long as I talk in the rhythm of the music, or they want to ask if someone can sit with them ("no" comes out easily while I'm playing) or something like that. This time Luke came up to me and said, "Mom, I think my nose is broken." That almost stopped me in my tracks. So I did a sideways glance at him. His nose was a little red, but there wasn't any significant swelling and he did not have black eyes as big as flying saucers, so I figured he'd live through the rest of the song service. I told him we'd check it out after church and went on playing and he went back up into the choir.
When the song service finished, I went down and sat in our pew, but I noticed Luke was nowhere in sight. One of his brothers said Luke went to check on his nose, so I started to go out when Luke came back in. His nose was a little swollen, and he didn't look real happy.
After the service, I pulled him to the side and took a look at his nose. I gently ran my fingers down the side of it, but he pulled away and said that hurt. Now I really was gentle, but I often wonder why we parents do stuff like that. Frankly, unless a bone actually sticks out from the skin and scratches my hand, I'm not sure I could tell if a nose was broken by touching it. Although there wasn't a lot of swelling, it concerned me that he couldn't stand anyone touching his nose at all. The teens were supposed to leave the next morning for camp, and I envisioned hours in the hospital waiting room trying to get his nose taken care of through the night. It seems that several of the kids were wrestling in the fellowship hall before the service. Can anyone say inappropriate church behaviour? Luke fell and then someone jumped on top of him and his nose hit the floor pretty hard. A group of us stood around and examined his nose and finally came to unanimous agreement that it was probably bruised, but not broken. He seemed fine the rest of the night, and he left for camp early the next morning, although he complained of pain every time he sniffed. I've talked to him and his dad several times since then and he seems to be doing fine.
This is not a picture of Luke, by the way, but it was the best picture I could find of a child's nose. I had a close-up of a nose that I put up first, but then I realized there was a whole nose-hair issue and it just seemed a little gross. So I found this cute kid instead.

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