A few weeks ago, we were at a park and my 4 year old, Sean came running over to us in tears.

He had a small graze on his shin and a teeny-tiny drop of blood next to it. We wiped away the blood, said “there, there, it’ll be alright”, gave him a pat on the head, and sent him back to his ball game.

A few weeks later, I noticed that his shin had a long red lump on it. His skin was hot to touch, and there was a tiny puncture mark. It all looked very swollen and infected.

I immediately made an appointment to see our doctor, who ordered us to have an ultrasound to see what was inside. She also warned us… that if there was something inside, we might have to get it surgically removed. AAAK SURGERY!

So. Next step. The most important thing was to keep our 4 year old cool and calm about everything. Our plan was to explain the WHOLE medical process to him in meticulous detail, so there wouldn’t be any surprises.

This led him to be very excited. And with his new found interest in photography, he asked if he could take photos. We thought: Uh. Sure. That would be cute. He can document the whole experience.

Sean on the lying down thing, pointing to the computer screen thing, which had lots of blurry blue blocks on it. He loved the whole experience.

“The doctor’s name was Dr Chris and he’s showing me the looking-thing. It looked a bit like a mouse, but it didn’t have buttons on it. It’s just got a panel on it for looking under your skin. But it doesn’t have eyes. Just a panel. A grey panel. That looks.”

“The doctor squirted jelly on my leg and rubbed that looking-thing on my leg. The jelly was cold, and it’s not the jelly that you eat. It tickled a bit, and he was kinda wobbling me around, but I was concentrating and trying to keep the camera still in case it went all blurry.”

“There were two screens of my leg. One was connected to the computer over there next to me and the doctor. And the other was high up on the wall. It was too blurry for me to see. It was just blueness and fuzzy and it had words and numbers around it.”

“This is dad.”

“The doctor said there was something in my leg. It was the stick from the park. He drew a line on my skin to show us how big the stick was. I asked him whether he was using a never-pen [he means a permanent marker pen] because I knew you wouldn’t be happy if the never-pen-ink went on my skin, but he said it was ok to draw on my skin, so I said ok.”

I was going to record Sean’s voice and put it up online, but trust me, he would have talked your ear off.

So. We’ve been referred to see a plastic surgeon, and we’ll be discussing what’s the best way to cut this thing out.

Next step. How to convince my 4 year old that getting his leg cut open will be very cool.