Joseph Kip (Part 3)

Now this picture is what I call an interesting standoff. I bet Jason never seen anything like this.

Onward and upward with the Kip story.

We lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho for a few years and had a lot of fun there. Beautiful place but too commercialized now. Anyway when Kip was 12 years old we decided to go on an overnight camp trip with our camper. It was one of those trips where several friends were there with their campers and we were planning a dutch oven chicken cookout compete with dutch oven biscuits and cobbler. Yum, makes me hungry thinking about it.

Now Kip, as he was growing older, had developed a talent of making himself sick when he did not want to do something. He could actually make himself throw up and really fool us; at first. By the time he was 12 I was on to him and we went round and round about his faking illness.

He did not want to go camping, was pulling his usual tricks and I was not believing him at all so he went whether he wanted to or not. We arrived at the campground which was about 80 or 90 miles from Idaho Falls; beautiful place in the mountains. We set up camp while Kip and his brother Mike took off exploring and playing. We noticed them about 100 yards away climbing on a tree that had fallen over but had lodged itself in another tree. I never thought to question the safety of them playing, I was just glad they were having fun and not under my feet complaining about this or that. About dusk Mike came running over to us and said, "The tree fell on Kip." Now this tree was a good 8 to 10 inches in diameter so it was not a little one. We looked over and sure enough the tree had fallen but Kip was on the ground next to it.

I ran over there but he appeared to be okay. He was holding his stomach and groaning and when I asked him if he was okay he said yes. I just figured he had the wind knocked out of him so all would be all right. I took him back to the camper and he laid down. As it became closer for the time to eat dinner I was salivating about that dutch oven chicken and really looking forward to it. I asked Kip if he was ready for dinner and he said no, he did not feel good. I thought, another one of his tricks. I looked at him and made the comment that he was not going to ruin this trip by acting the way he was and I huffed off.

He stayed in the camper while the rest of us went and had dinner. His mother brought some food over to him but he would not eat it. After a little coaxing he finally tried some of the dutch oven potatoes; within 5 minutes he threw them up. Well fine, then he would not get any supper. Later we went to bed and he kept groaning and moaning and wanted to go home. Cheryl and I listened to this for a while and decided maybe I should take him to get checked out by a doctor. So I got up and Kip and I drove the 80 or so miles back to Idaho Falls and I took him to the emergency room.

The doctor on call could not find anything wrong but suggested Kip stay overnight so they could monitor him just to be sure. I went back to our house and spent the night, probably huffing about missing a good camp trip. The next morning I returned to the camp site, picked up my family and brought them all home. I found out later while I was gone the doctors were trying to make contact with me. Upon arriving home with the family we finally got the call and they wanted us back at the hospital as soon as possible.

Arriving at the hospital we found the doctors wanted to keep Kip longer for more observation. We visited with our son for a while then returned home to clean up and take care of the rest of the gang. We got a telephone call from the nurse saying that Kip was going into surgery and we should return right away. They were going to do exploratory surgery because they knew something was wrong but could not put their finger on it. When they opened him up they found a quart of blood had pooled in his abdomen and his spleen had ruptured. Had they not performed the surgery in all likelihood he would have died before the night was over.

Wellllllllll, again Dad had to do some soul searching about not listening to his children when they say something is wrong. The knees go a little weak when you find out it was so close. Having already lost a son I don't know how I would have handled another situation of like nature. I am just glad my wife was by my side giving me comfort and encouragement. Kip, now at the age of 12, has a scar down his back and a scar going like a reversed number 7 down his front. But the saga still continues; tomorrow the car accident.