Nay, we are but men. Rock!

I mentioned in the post about my son getting a pebble stuck in his bronchial tube that there was a story to tell about my family and three other families camping and white water rafting/kayaking on the Rogue River in southern Oregon.  This is that story.  It was amazing.  There were parts of the trip that were hard but more that were not.  We went down with our small group from church.  I have been part of small groups before but this is the first one I can honestly say functions like what I think a small group should function like.  We share life together, not just Sundays.  It took a little getting used to, for everyone I’m sure, to know how to camp with so many other people.  I think we figured it out pretty well.

This was the first time any of the families, except one, had been camping with kids.  My wife and I are pretty avid outdoors-men, or outdoors-persons to be more accurate, and have spent a lot of time in the backcountry; our kids are one and three and have not.  The main difference I found between backpacking alone and car camping with kids is that camping, or being for that matter, anywhere with kids is fifteen million times dirtier.  It was dusty, muddy, outdoorsy bliss for anyone under the age of five.  The first thing the kids started doing when we got to the campsite was to start digging a hole.  Seems pretty exciting.  They worked on this hole the entire trip.  It was an obsession for them and they went at it with the fervor of a rabid wolverine fighting a pack of marmots.  I bet when they are all older they will say to one another, “Hey do you remember that time when we were camping and we dug that hole?” …pause for staring off into the distance and ford remembering… “That was a great hole.”

Apart from the hole digging there were other things that happened as well, all of which pale in comparison to the hole though.  We took a trip down the Rogue River in rafts and inflatable kayaks.  This was incredible.  I have not been on any white water since moving to Oregon three years ago and never in a kayak.  I’m sold.  If I have my druthers I will never ride in a raft again; it’s kayaks for me all the way.  We went down with a company called Obrien’s Rogue River Outfitters.  They were amazing.  I don’t normally make plugs but it was probably the best guided trip I have ever taken.  They have some pictures and a little blurb about our trip on their blog, http://www.rogue-river-rafting-trips.com

The only blemishes to the weekend were when my son inhaled the pebble, even though that probably shouldn’t count because we didn’t know about it until 10 days later, and when our friends’ son tripped over one of the guy ropes on my tent and got a spiral fracture of the femur.  That’s right I said a spiral fracture of the femur.  Crazy huh?  It not like he was traveling with any great velocity either.  He was running as fast as a two-year-old can run with only having 10 feet or so to gather momentum and tripped over the ropes and got a, incase I didn’t mention it earlier, spiral fracture of the femur.  He has to wear a cast that goes from his ribcage to his ankles with a dowel between his legs and a chunk taken out of the crotch so he can do his business.  So basically for the next five weeks or so he has to either lay down or stand up, and by stand up I mean be propped up against the wall.  If it were me I think I would name this chapter of my family’s life “Benadryl and Movies All Around.”  But that’s just me.

I am glad for this trip on many different levels.  I am glad that we got out and did something outside with my family.  I am glad that despite two of the children needing to have surgery because of the trip we are still looking forward to the next time we can cam as a group.  I am glad that we shared in so many different levels of experience together.  And I am glad our small group goes beyond superficial groups I have known in the past to being friends in the best sense of the word and when things are hard and some of us need help and support it’s there.

Whoever first said, “You can’t get blood from a stone” was an idiot.  I just got back from the hospital with my one-year-old son where he had to have surgery to remove a stone that was lodged in his right bronchial tube for 10 days!!!  About a week and a half ago my family and I were camping and white water rafting/kayaking with three other families, more to come on that trip in a very near post, when my youngest son put a handful of pea gravel into his mouth.  This is not an uncommon occurrence.  The cat would eat a pile of radioactive scorpion tails tied together with barbed wire and soaked in vermouth if he could get his hands on them.  I walked over to him and did the regular, “No, no, spit it out” routine and he did, for the most part.  He must have missed one in the expectorating because he started to gag and cough pretty vigorously.  I looked in his mouth and saw a little piece of gravel in his throat.  So I did what anyone would have done at that point, I put my finger in his throat to try and get the choking hazard out.  This had roughly the same effect as poking a feeding rhino in the eye with a flaming baton.  He didn’t like it much and showed me by nearly dismembering one of my fingers.  This, as you can see, wouldn’t have made much sense because then he would have had a piece of pea gravel, which was only pushed farther down by my attempts to remove it, as well as a finger blocking his airway.  I am glad he thought better of biting my finger off and just decided to swear at me in baby language instead.  He cried for a couple of mintues and then settled down so my wife and I thought he had swallowed it and would deliver it back to the soil in a couple of days.  

The camping trip regrettably ended and we headed home where we noticed a little bit of a rasp in my son’s breathing but attributed it to the dust and camping.  Over the next couple of days his cough didn’t get any better and it didn’t get any worse and he had an appointment with his doctor in a couple of weeks so we decided to keep an eye on it and just wait and see.  Well a couple of days ago he developed a cough that kind of sounded like you where choking Elmo while kicking him in the giblets repeatedly.  At first it was only an isolated incident but when it kept happening over the course of two days we decided to take him to urgent care.  Here we got an X-ray on his chest and found an almost almond-sized piece of pea gravel lodged just at the top of his lung in the bronchial tube.  We were off to Children’s Hospital and the land of teensy little operating instruments.

We were admitted overnight and the surgery happened at about 10:00am the next morning.  Now I know this was probably a traumatic experience for the little guys but I do not think I have ever seen anything so funny as a one-year-old coming out of anesthesia.  When we walked back to the recovery room we could hear the nurses laughing before we even got there.  Think back to high school parties when you were a senior.  Remember the freshman that would always show up and drink too much trying to impress the seniors but end up naked on the pool table mumbling incoherent song lyrics while others at the party prodded him in the stomach with a yard stick because it would make him giggle?  It was kind of like that but without the hangover and, I’m sure, much more expensive.

The surgery itself lasted a grand total of about 16 minutes and the doctor gave us the piece of gravel in a cup.  The only dilemma  I am currently facing is what to do with the pebble.  I am thinking that I may have it set in a chunk of amber and mounted on the end of a cane.  It would be my pimp stick but I am open to suggestions.