Learning lessons from my grandson’s perspective

The older I get, the more I let things irritate me. I seem to – more often than not – lose perspective and allow a small thing mess up my entire day … or week.

n The kids have returned to school, sports practices and games are back on the schedule and your life just got more hectic!

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Home Helpers Home Care is a provider for VA Homemaker / Home Health Aide Program, and accepts all Long-Term Care Insurance and Family-Funded / Private Pay.

If you watch the news or just scroll through Facebook, I think you will agree that many of us have lost perspective. We let small things and/or maybe not-so-small things, dictate too much of our life, our thoughts and our enjoyment.

I recently got a lesson on perspective from my five-year-old grandson. He loves his cousins who live in Baton Rouge, family vacations and anything to do with water. So, you can imagine a five-yearold’s excitement when the day finally came to begin our trip to join his cousins at the beach for our family vacation.

He is a great traveler, but this five-hour trip was long. Excitement and anticipation were at an alltime high. Somehow, we managed to reach our destination within five minutes of his cousins. We get to the condo, unload, somewhat unpack, and get dressed ready to hit the water.

That’s when it happened. Less than one hour from arrival, my grandson’s finger had been slammed in between two massive sliding glass doors. For loss of a better term, his finger exploded.

We took him to the local emergency room. They were wonderful with him. His finger was broken, cut, the nail bed had been severed and his bone exposed. They tried as best they could to get him comfortable from the pain and finally had to sedate him so they could surgically remove the nail bed. We were then told that we were going to have to go to the Mobile (Ala.) Woman’s and Children’s Hospital. There, a pediatric orthopedic doctor could determine if the removed nail bed could be reattached or if they would need to make a new nail bed.

It took us an hour to arrive in Mobile, nail bed in hand. They rushed us back, referring to us as the “transplant” and they took the container holding the nail bed from me. Once again, the ER staff was phenomenal, but it took a while for them to get control of the pain that my grandson was