[Question] Scars

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MindDetective

MindDetective

My 20 month old acquired a half-inch split to his forehead last night (over his right eyebrow), resulting in 3 stitches. My wife has a very personal history with facial scarring and felt like she didn't insist enough on calling the plastic surgeon from the hospital a town over to do a better job on the cut than the ER doc. Our primary physician looked at it today and said the reduction in swelling has probably contorted the cut a bit, which might mean an uglier scar than if it were stitched straighter. We're waiting to hear from the plastic surgeon if it isn't too late.

I am not too worried but my wife is feeling extra guilty about the ramifications of his eventual scar. Parents, what are your experiences with forehead or facial scars? Non-parents, do you have a visible scar, or did you used to and it faded? I'd love to hear your stories.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

This one time I was an attorney working a case against a known mobster. He somehow sneaked acid into the courtroom and threw it at me. Thanks to Batman, it only got one side of my face, but...

Wait, no. Hang on.
 
Chad Sexington

Chad Sexington

So my brother was out "helping" dad shovel snow when he was 3. Dad swings his metal shovel a bit too hard and bamf! Nice little quarter inch line in Sam's forehead. My mother insisted he should go to the hospital for stitches, Dad insisted he would be fine. Sometime later, during a routine physical, the doctor said "You know, you probably should have had this stitched up."

Anyway, it disappeared by the time he was 11 or 12. Which was too bad because I couldn't make fun of the 'dent' in his forehead anymore.
 
Gusto

Gusto

I got an early scars that is only really noticeable because my eyebrow doesn't grow in that part anymore. The skin itself is pretty indistinguishable unless I really furrow my brow.
 
BananaHands

BananaHands

Staff member
Gusto said:
I got an early scars that is only really noticeable because my eyebrow doesn't grow in that part anymore. The skin itself is pretty indistinguishable unless I really furrow my brow.
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Same here. There's a slight line where hair doesn't grow on my left eyebrow. One girl said it was 'sexy' recently.

Thank your wife for sexyfying your son.
 
drawn_inward

drawn_inward

Speaking from personal experience, scars fade considerably over time in both size and color. I don't have any pics to prove it though. I went face first through a car window (see halforum wiki). All I have to show for it now is a Harrison Ford-esque scar on my chin. In the ER, my lower lip was hanging down to my chest!

I wouldn't worry about it too much!
 
Fun Size

Fun Size

My boy fell against a table when he was two and got a pretty nasty cut next to his eye. It didn't look big enough for stitches, but he's had a short scar next to that eye ever since. I will say two things: a) it's gotten a lot lighter over the years, to the point where I don't know if you would even see it if you didn't know it was there, and b) being a male person, I reassured my wife that if it was a bad scar, that just meant that the story(stories) he and I make up for how he got it will be that much more awesome.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
My son has been for stitches like 4 times now. He has a nasty habit of hurting himself. Once at VBS, he ran face-first into the edge of the open school door, which split his forehead open to the bone, requiring internal and external stitches. Christmas 2011, he fell off the top of a swingset, and caught one of those s-hooks holding the swing right across the bridge of his nose, opening a nasty gash I could see all the way into. I did the same. I fell forehead first onto an upward pointing screw in 1st grade, and was bitten by a brown recluse on my chin, causing a scar. Both of us kind of feel the same way. We never even think about it. The one on my forehead is long gone, and his are fading. Neither of us were ever really picked on for it as far as I remember.

I also tell my wife that it makes a dude look manly. He should be proud of his war wounds.
 
North_Ranger

North_Ranger

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When I was in school, I had a friend who had a long scar across his forehead. If memory serves, he got it from falling off a tree or something when he was a kid. I never asked too much about it; it was just a long line near the hairline, and nothing else for us kids. He didn't seem to mind it much, either.
 
strawman

strawman

Particularly at that age the skin is very malleable. It will be noticeable for a year or two to everyone that sees him. After a few years it will really only be noticed by and noticeable to everyone who knows about it and where it is. After puberty it won't really be particularly noticeable, even to those who know where it is, although some people do end up with a different musculature underneath so an extra dimple might be visible in that spot when he crinkles his forehead.

Forehead tissue damage, in my inexpert opinion, occurs under the skin more than on the skin. A simple cut will go away a lot faster than a bang against something with a sharp corner which results in significant long lasting swelling.

If the swelling is minimal, chances are that it'll hardly be noticeable after a year, and perhaps even sooner giving how young he is.

But if having a baby face is very important to your wife, then a good plastic surgeon might be able to help. Whenever I've discussed such issues with our doctors, though, they indicate that they prefer not to perform plastic surgery for such small issues because the surgery required to repair the damage below the skin may actually make things worse in the long run, even though it'll result in a cosmetically good appearance in the short term. The muscles and other tissue in that area are so small on infants that it's usually better to wait and see how it turns out, then perform surgery if necessary after age 5 or so when they might be affected by schoolkid comments.

But for me, it's just not worth it. Everyone has marks of character on their face, as you can see by those posting here. Even "routine" plastic surgery has unintended consequences.
 
MindDetective

MindDetective

Ravenpoe said:
Kids are going to get picked on. That's just a fact of life, and will always happen regardless of whether they have a scar or not.

Besides, scars are cool.
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Yeah, I think so as well, but this isn't so much about a rational discussion (personal histories are personal, ingrained) but trying to get some perspective myself. My wife's guilt spills over a little sometime and I start to feel it.
 
Dave

Dave

Staff member
Teach him how to say, "Beating up your dad." in a thick, Russian accent. Then when the other kids ask him how he got his scar...

Nobody will fuck with him.
 
Cajungal

Cajungal

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I have two white scars on the tips of my middle fingers. It looked like someone was trying to punish me for flipping them off. But really, I'm just clumsy in the kitchen sometimes.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
I don't have scars anymore, but in 3rd grade, I found a razor blade in my dad's workshop, and I sliced all 5 fingers on my left hand longways. I did it because I was fascinated that it didn't hurt. I got scared when my hands started bleeding like crazy and wouldn't stop.
 
Sparhawk

Sparhawk

I busted my chin open on the floor of a produce section in a grocery store when I was about 3, got a couple of stitches. Honestly I can barely find the thing now. Kids heal incredibly well, and he'll never thing anything of it.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Let's see...When I was about 2 and a half, I snuck out of bed, went down to my parents, and tripped over a small fireman car my brother had been playing with - fell with my head straight o nthe sharp corner of a cupboard. That was 5 stitches, directly in the middle of my forehead.
Then, when I was about 8, I was at a children's party, and even though they had told us explicitly not to dance on the tables, well, errr, I fell off the table, with my head straight on the sharp corner of another table. That gave me a swollen bump that still hasn't disappeared.
I had a lip gash once that simply wouldn't heal, and even though it's healed now (after about 14 months) it's permanently thinned one side of my lips.
When I was about 8 or 9, I was a wimp and my brother was big and strong, so I took one of those arm-strength-thingies with some elastics in between two handles (something like this, but with elastics instead of springs:)


Of course, me being the young weakling I was, I stretched them allll the way out, only for one side to slip from my grasp and smack me across the face. That's 4 stitches on the other side of my lips.

All in all, eh, I don't look the worse for it :p

Anyway, by far the most noticeable one is the bump on my forehead. When I've tanned a bit or so, I'll still get people asking if I recently bumped into something, because that makes it stand out more. The rest, eh. A small, non-invasive scar doesn't detract from beauty at all; there's a reason women had "beauty spots" on the 19th century. Symmetry is pretty, too much symmetry is bland. Cosmetic surgery for any little thing leads to things like human Barbie, which no-one finds attractive.
If it's a serious scar, really altering the facial structure, that's one thing. If it's just a small line, even a bit crooked, I certainly wouldn't do anything at this age - as Stienman's pointed out, early cosmetic surgery will often have negative long-term effects, necessitating further operations to keep it pretty - as scar tissue around such surgery tends not to grow along with the rest of the body properly. Unless it's a horrible disfigurement, he's probably better off leaving it like this 'till at least his teens - if it's still noticeable and he feels it detracts from his looks and/or he gets made fun of for it, it'll be easier, probably cheaper, healthier and a more conscious choice to remove it at that time.
 
LittleKagsin

LittleKagsin

I'm sorry your wife had such a horrible experience with scars. But my personal experience is that they go away with time. I fell into a fire when I was young, around 4th grade I think, and had really terrible scars on my knees. I was told that they would never go away, that I would always have them, but by 7th-8th grade they were barely visible and by 9th grade were completely gone.

From what I've seen and heard, scars fade. As was pereviously mentioned, he may have a slight dimple, but I doubt it will be anything that will receive teasing.
 
Cajungal

Cajungal

Staff member
MindDetective said:
I am not too worried but my wife is feeling extra guilty about the ramifications of his eventual scar. Parents, what are your experiences with forehead or facial scars? Non-parents, do you have a visible scar, or did you used to and it faded? I'd love to hear your stories.
Click to expand...
If it's a boy, I have to say, in my experience boys catch less hell for scars than girls. Not always true, but generally, boys thought they were "cool." Maybe if a mark sticks around and he asks about it, it could be a positive story about that time when he was a good little trooper.
 
HCGLNS

HCGLNS

I was mauled as a child and all my facial scars faded with time.

My daughter got a lovely scar on her chin and it's mostly gone by now.

Essentially with time, the only people who will notice are those that have taken the time to get close to you and won't care, especially if they are small.

If they are large and prominent, there's obviously a story. Like a Lichtenberg figure.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Have a couple scars from various outdoor activities. Only one of them is all that noticeable (a slice of my hand cut out from a pocket knife) but even then you have to give more than a passing look to see it.

From my experience, severe burn scars and chemical scars are basically the only ones that stay around for awhile. Just keep them clean and covered while they heal and they will usually fade after a few years.
 
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