A Parent Never Stops Worrying

January 17, 2025

A few days ago I got a call that would stop any parents heart.

“Dad, there was an accident at work with the wood chipper” I heard my son say over the phone. My heart seemed to stop and the outside world faded out.

It was Wednesday night, and I wasn’t expecting a call from anyone much less my son.

“Are you okay I asked as calmly as I could,” not knowing what to expect. I could tell from his voice that he was upset, maybe on the verge of losing it.

“A branch I put in the wood chipper shot back and hit me in the face, breaking my jaw in two places” he replied.

My stress level that was at a ten out of an initial worry that he might have lost a hand at the mention of a wood chipper, or worse, reduced slightly to a nine.

“Honey come up here!” I yelled down to my wife who was just heading out the door for an event. As I quickly relayed the information her stress level instance hit nine as well.

They Never Stop Being Your Babies

I don’t care how old they get, they will always be your baby, will always be someone you worry if they are doing ok, if they are happy, if they are sad.

I feel the same way about our son who is twenty-three as I do about our daughter who is sixteen. In some ways we probably worry more because he’s on his own, he is an adult.

As we continued to talk to our son he explained he was at the hospital and being moved to a different hospital for surgery in the morning.

We quickly decided that his Mom would come up before the surgery, I was on call for work, and almost half way through a course of thirty radiation treatments, so it was agreed that I would hold down the fort.

To be honest we haven’t had a lot of luck lately with health issues, between my Mother-In-Law who lives with us falling down the stairs and breaking her foot to my supposed cyst removal on my temple turning out to be skin cancer, the hits have just kept on coming.

This was just the cherry on the top of everything. And with this being his first surgery ever, that stress level inched up to a respectable 9.2.

Post-Surgery

Thursday came and the surgery went without incident thankfully. His jaw wired shut, he is looking at at least two weeks of a puree diet. Naturally we wanted him to come home for his recovery.

But independence is something nobody likes to give up, and as an adult we knew we needed to respect his decision to stay at his flat.

We did insist that Mom would stay in a hotel on Friday and do some shopping and laundry to give him a chance to rest. Some fights you have to let Mom win after all.

Wear Your Safety Equipment

Since this was a workplace injury and he was wearing the required personal protective equipment (PPE) everything including his doctor mandated recovery will be paid for which is definitely a relief.

But more importantly, the PPE gear prevented this from being an even worse or fatal injury. If you work in a higher risk field let this post serve as a testiment to the benefits of wearing safety gear.

Wisdom Gained

Our fingers are crossed moving forward that his recovery goes well and without incident. I am positive that he will gain some wisdom from this event about safety and wood chipper operation. Because that’s really all that wisdom is, experience gained from life. Until next time.