Whew, it’s been 3 weeks since I last wrote, but it has taken that long for all of us to recover from Owen’s continuous ordeals.

A week after Owen’s first febrile seizure resulting from the vaccines was Thanksgiving.  Everything was going splendidly with the entire family all gathered together until 4pm Thanksgiving Day. Grandma Yao decided that Owen needs a haircut.  I wanted Sherwood to cut it since that’s been his job thus far, but for whatever reason, he didn’t want to that day.  I voiced my objection that since Grandma Yao has never cut anyone’s hair, even adults, that it would not be a good idea for her to cut Owen’s hair.  Nope, no one would listen…no, no, it’ll be just fine.  Nothing to it.  Sure.

I was there during the initial stage of the cutting and helped entertain Owen and to just monitor; when Grandma Yao finished cutting the back, I figured we were done so I said I would go get the bath tub ready for Owen to take a bath.  Well, I had not even walked out our bedroom door (Owen was getting the haircut in our bathroom) when Sherwood called my name urgently, saying, Owen’s bleeding due to a cut to his ear!  I come running back into the bathroom, only to find a crying Owen with blood dripping down his left ear and a bewildered Grandma Yao and angry Sherwood. I couldn’t see how bad the cut was, but there was much more blood than I had expected and it wouldn’t stop despite me applying pressure to it.  Of course, having to deal with an upset and howling Owen did not help. 

I cleaned the cut quickly, but did not apply any medicine to it since we did not have any antibiotic cream at home (ours had expired, plus I didn’t know if it was ok to use on a 15 month old) and the bleeding had not stopped yet, so we just put a bandage around it.  After holding the poor Owen for a while, he finally calmed down and laid his head on my shoulder against the affectd ear (guess pressure is applied to the area, it actually is less painful).  I handed him over to Sherwood so I can go out to buy antibiotic cream - I didn’t know if I was able to since this was around 5pm already on Thanksgiving Day.  Thanks to God, the Kroger near our store was still open. 

When I got home, I was outnumbered by the Yao family so I could not put on the cream right away (they all thought, since it had finally stopped bleeding, that if I remove the bandage, the bleeding would start again), so we headed over to my parents’ house (2 miles from us) for Thanksgiving dinner.  *sigh* I felt terrible since my Mom and aunt had spent the entire day/afternoon cooking (I was going to come over early to help before the accident), not only did I not help, I couldn’t even help clean up since I was getting dragged to go home early due to Owen’s discomfort.  We had planned to enjoy the night with karaoke and mahjong, but ended up leaving right after dinner.  :(

Then when we got home, I was almost outnumbered again - they changed their mind about letting me put antibiotic cream on it.  I kept on brining up the possibility of an infection, so they finally yielded.  Although I know my decision was right, when the bleeding started again (guess the blood had dried over the cut and was stuck tot the bandage, so we should have dripped some liquid across the cut first to dissolve the dry blood before removing the bandage, but we didn’t so opened up the cut again), I did doubt my decision. Thankfully though, due to the cleansing and antiobiotic ointment, Owen’s cut did not get an infection.