Tag: Splinters

Splinters, shot, needles, oh my

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Round two on the splinter front yesterday. Sweet sweet Mario is ridiculously scared of anything sharp – needles, tweezers, shots…if it’s pointy, he wants it banished.

When we drove home from the farm on Saturday night, Mario started crying in the back seat. Jon and I asked him what was wrong and he stuttered out one word: “shots.”

“I don’t want to get shots when I turn 8.”

“Mario, that’s a long time from now.”

“I don’t care. I still think about it every day and can’t stop.”

“Baby doll, you will be fine. We all get them.”

“I will do anything mom. I will stay 5 forever. I don’t want to get older because I don’t want a shot.”

Jon: “I have to get shots a lot, Mario. You will be ok.”

“They hurt me though, dad. Can’t they just give me the spray?”

Mario has gotten the spray flu vaccine for the last two years and now thinks any shot can come in spray form. I had to hold his hand from the front seat for fifteen minutes until he finally calmed down and fell asleep.

So when he came into the bedroom Monday morning and announced that he believed he had a splinter, my heart sank. I dreaded the thought of trying to get a splinter out of his foot. Last time, it was all out hell with Mario kicking and screaming and bawling. Jon and I left him with David Monday morning and both prayed for a miracle. The splinter would somehow inch its way out.

Not so lucky. He was up in his bed when I got home. He screamed for me. I walked upstairs with the tweezers and safety pin behind my back.

“Please don’t hurt me, mom. Please don’t touch it. You can only look.”

It took fifteen minutes and Jon holding his hand for Mario to let me look at his foot. It took another ten for us to convince him to let us poke at it. It also took both if us promising him $5 each if he was brave and let us get it out. He held onto Jon and watched Spongebob on the iPad. As soon as I poked the pin at his skin he jumped and pleaded for me to stop.

“Please wait mom! Please let me tell you something!”

Funny how he is so polite during these moments. Jon and I listened to him and comforted him and listened and comforted. But finally we had to hold him down and dig in. I barely poked at the skin but if you heard him you would have thought we were cutting off his leg.

I got it!

I announced that I got it out and he looked stunned, relieved and dazed all at once. The horror was over. He promptly sat up in his bed, reacged out his hand, and smirked “ten dollars, please.” Yea, he will do anything for money.

A splinter takes down Macho

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Our macho little Mario who consistently taunts us by saying “Bring It On” and wrestling us was taken down by a one inch splinter. 

He brushed his hand against the wood bannister outside and got a tiny splinter in the palm of his hand.  He came in to show me, and I told him it should be easy to get out.  He remembered back to the first splinter he got months ago – Jon had to literally hold his feet and arms down while I worked it out with a pair of tweezers.  Meanwhile he cried and fidgeted the entire time.  We were forced to take that route with him after begging him to voluntarily allow us to get it out.  He absolutely refused months ago and continued to absolutely refuse this time around.  When I approached him with the tweezers, he freaked out.  He ran away; he cried huge tears; he begged and pleaded to keep the splinter in his hand. 

I finally calmed him down after ten minutes and got him to agree to allow me to just look at it.  It took me another 10 minutes to get him to agree to allow me to use the tweezers on him, and that was only because I scared him half to death by telling him that his hand would have to be cut off if he didn’t get the splinter out.  But he would only allow me one pick with the tweezers so I could not get deep enough to get it out.  After the one pick, he grabbed his hand and rolled on his back crying “I can’t take it anymore!”  He then would plead that we must stop because the pain was too much.  Finally, he cried “I just want to die!” 

Our macho wrestler pre-splinterI couldn’t help but laugh.  Even Maria chuckled.  I finally got almost all of it out but there was just a small little piece that would have come out if I could have used the sharp end of a pair of scissors.  But as soon as I picked those up, he ran away yelling “Those are too sharp, mom!  Too sharp!”  After throwing the scissors fifty feet away from me to convince him I would not use them, he made his was back to me to get the final piece out.  And we did.  He got a band-aid and a big ol’ hug and within ten minutes he was begging me to wrestle him.