Mom on the Run: Stitches--so close, yet so far away

Lianne Wilkens/Columnist
Published: April 27, 2008

I'm standing, hands on knees, bending over to inspect my son's leg, which is propped up on a kitchen chair. I can't help it, I wrinkle my nose and crumple my mouth and wince. It's gross.

There are four wounds on his right shin: two good-sized gashes and two smaller puncture wounds. I missed yesterday's excitement, I wasn't home when his foot slipped off the bike pedal and the traction spikes dug into his leg and the blood coursed down, but still, inspecting the cuts 24 hours later, they're pretty nasty.

"Do I need stitches?" My son asks hopefully, figuring that stitches are cool. His father had initially declared them to be "borderline lacerations," meaning they might need a trip to the emergency room, but, "No. They haven't bled since last night, so they're OK," I tell him.

"But what about that gray bit?" He bends down, holds his leg with his left hand, points with his right. "Stop!" I tell him. "Don't pull it apart!" He's tugging on his leg, trying to show me what he's talking about, and I'm afraid he's going to undo the little bit of healing he's had.

"Gray bit?" I bend more, look closer. Sure enough, right in the middle of the longest gash, "Oh, yeah." It's definitely gray, right where the jagged skin has its biggest zig and zag over the red gorge of the cut, but, "I think it's OK. It's kind of a purply gray, like bruising and dried blood, and that would be expected."

"So where did this happen? I never got the full story."

"I was over on Zach and Corey's street riding my bike. They brought me some hydrogen peroxide and Band-Aids, and we patched it up."

"Whose street?" I've never heard of these kids.

"You don't know them," he says, which only increases my interest.

"Who brought you the hydrogen peroxide?"

"Zach and Corey. They poured it all over."

"I bet that stung."

"Yeah, it was bad," and my son finally grimaces. "We put on Band-Aids and it kept bleeding, all down my leg."

"So then what did you do?"

He shrugs. "We kept riding."

I'm looking at my son and shaking my head. When I got home last night his new, Dad-applied large Band-Aids had bled through, and even now it looks alarming so, "It must have been bad," I tell my son.

"It was." He thinks a minute, and, "Wanna see the picture?" Picture? My 13-year-old leaps up and thunders up the stairs to his room. In minutes he's back, cell phone in hand. He flips it open, presses some buttons, says, "Here," and hands me the phone.

"Ooooh," I wince again. The picture is a close-up of my kid's leg, knee to ankle, with three bandages in the middle and thick streams of blood above and below. The Band-Aids are strategically positioned, and I'm touched by the hydrogen peroxide part of the story, but they're so little, fingers in the dike.

"So no stitches?"

"No stitches."

"OK," he shrugs. "I'm going out to play lacrosse."

Lacrosse? Running and slashing with sticks? Yeah, I smile. I think he'll be OK.

Lianne Wilkens lives with her family in Manassas. She can be reached at .