When Tyler was almost six, his doctor decided to attempt to desensitize him to his allergy to Factor 9 (his clotting medicine) by connecting him to a CAD pump which would run 24/7. In order to do this, he needed a Broviac port which consisted off a tube hanging out of his chest and connected to the CAD pump that he wore around his waist. The tube ran into one of his major arteries. For one and a half years, he was receiving clotting medicine 24/7 in small amounts to force his body to give up and accept this much needed protein and eliminate his anaphylactic reactions. Until one day, when Tyler apparently decided enough was enough.
By the time Tyler was seven, he was allowed to walk home from the bus stop. It was five houses down, and some bigger kids in the neighborhood walked with him. (He was desperate for some independence.) One afternoon, I heard the door shut and the shower turn on. I quickly came to see what in the world was going on. He was standing there with dripping wet clothes and the most guilty looking face. Apparently, our park which was at the bus stop was full of water and the kids decided to run through it, Tyler included. “It was a blast!”, he claimed. “Tyler! Don’t you know that’s reclaimed water?”, I asked. “What’s that?”, asked Tyler. “Poop water!”, I told him. “Rut row!”
Needless to say, despite my efforts to clean the site, Tyler developed a black scab over the insertion site which later turned into sepsis. As terrible as the whole thing ended up being, I still couldn’t blame him for just wanting to be a boy running through poop water like all the other kids. The lesson I took away from this story was, our kids are going to make mistakes because they are children. Let them participate in fun kid stuff. Just make sure they don’t do it in reclaimed water!
Blogging about Bleeding Disorders 