Pulling Out The Velveteen Rabbit

I thought today was going to be a good one until he was in the 400 range again.

It was time to pull out Old Faithful...one of the hundreds of neglected needles we have stashed in the closet, but are always there just in case they're needed. They were once used all of the time...every day...several times a day until one day they weren't needed anymore. Yet, there they remained...waiting for his pump to stop working, or for some other mishap that they may need to rescue Brendon from.

It sort of reminded me of The Velveteen Rabbit:

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the Skin Horse only smiled.

I plugged 403 into his pump to see how much it would dose him for...if anything at this point, his pump is great for calculations!!...and it mercifully called out 1 unit. Easy peasy.

I told Brendon he needed a shot and he asked, "With a needle?"

I told him yes.

He paced back and forth like a caged tiger and stomped off into the family room and plopped himself on the couch.

"Do it in the stomach."

"No, your stomach might be all used up."

"Where are you going to do it?"

"In the arm. It won't even hurt. It'll hurt less than an infusion set!"

"No, I don't want it in the arm. What about me? I want to do it."

"You want to give yourself the shot?"

"Yes, I've done it before."

He wiped the tears from his eyes and watched as I cleaned off a section of meaty thigh, and he pinched his skin while holding the needle in mid air....hesitating.

He was thinking too much. I could see the needle inching closer. Finally Jeff told him to do it quick.

Brendon in achingly slow motion pierced his skin with the needle and pushed the plunger down.

He saw a microscopic teeny tiny speck of a speck of blood and pointed to it asking "I think I see something. Is that OK?"

"Yes Brendon. It's fine. You did a good job."

To see him so worked up over a needle now at a big burly 8 years old when at 2 1/2 years old he was so nonchalant and cooperative about getting a shot somehow broke the hell out of my heart.

It's just one of those things I guess.

Now he's whooping, hollering, and laughing at a prediction his Dad made about a play the Mets made not too soon after that prediction.

"How did you know that, Dad? Holy mackerel!!"