We have mostly fond memories of our trip to Yellowstone National Park way back in 2001. But we didn’t feel the need to re-live all of those memories…
While wandering through the mud volcano area, Andy had decided it would be great fun to run along the trail while running his hand along the unfinished log rails!
Needless to say, he wound up with a palm FULL of slivers! We took our crying child back to the first aid kit in the van, complete with tweezers. Andy would have none of it! He cried and cried about how badly they hurt. People started to stare. So we loaded him into the van, shut all the doors and windows and proceeded to attempt to remove the numerous pieces of rail embedded in our son’s hand. Now Andy is no longer crying but screaming as if we were ax murdering him in the van. We were definitely getting nowhere on the slivers and attracting more and more attention from other park visitors.
By this time, each little splinter was turning red and puffy. It was time to seek outside help….
We drove several miles to the “hospital” (clinic) at Lake Village. Andy’s hand was now quite swollen and the slivers HAD to be removed. A task easier said than done as Andy was in no mood to cooperate. Our options: give him an adult dose of valium (he weighed about 38 pounds at the time) and hope it kicked in despite the adrenalin rush or tie him to a gurney with sheets and hope for the best. The safety of valium and the possibility of it not working until after the procedure and spending several hours in the clinic waiting for it to wear off didn’t seem like the better of the two choices.
So we went with the sheets. Little did we know how unbelievably strong our tiny little 6 year old was! It took 3 grown adults (including one very large man, a nurse and myself) to hold him down while the doctor removed slivers and administered novocaine. All the while Andy is screaming awful things that can be heard all throughout Lake Village… “I hate you!” “You’re killing me!” “I can’t breathe!” “Stop! Promise me you’ll stop!”
It was the longest 2 hours of my life! When we were all done, my sweaty red-eyed little boy sat up and said, “Thank you! I know you had to do it.” Even the doctor got teary.
We left the clinic with antibiotics and a bandaged up little man.
Thankfully we did get to see most of the park while we were there, including lots of bison!
The scenery was gorgeous!
The boys did great with all the hiking and even made the Uncle Tom’s Trail down, and up, numerous steep switchbacks and over 300 stairs to the Lower Falls platform!
Sometimes even not-so-great experiences make for really great memories!
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