elfs | Pulling The Big Red Switch #2

Kouryou-chan, the three-year-old, had a visit to the emergency room this evening.

Our schedule this day was so screwed up from all the running around that we didn't get to making dinner until about 7:30pm, at which point I was out of ideas for cooking, so I asked the kids what they wanted and both of them piped up, "Hotdogs!"

So I put some water on to boil and dropped the hot dogs in while I defrosted some rolls and got out the cheese for Kouryou-chan's dog, since she won't eat it any other way. Six minutes later, I went to pour out the water just as Kouryou-chan, who knows she's not supposed to be in the kitchen when cooking is going on unless an adult tells her so, wanders right in and for no reason I can fathom reaches up and touches the heating element on the stove.

I dropped the pan into the sink even as she was moving, knocked her hand away from the stove and hustled her into the bathroom, where I immediately started running cool water over her hand. She objected to my manhandling of her until the pain hit, and then she just started bawling. Omaha caught up with us at this point and asked me what happened. I explained. She took over with Kouryou-chan while I did what was necessary next, looking up instructions in the first aid manual, getting Yamaarashi-chan her dinner.

I got a little upset with Yamaarashi-chan, I'm afraid. She kept trying to bring up these silly little stories, interrupting me while I was reading the first aid manual, and I snapped at her. "Get out of my way!"

Omaha recognized what was happening, thankfully. She's much better at this whole parent thing than I am. She called me into the bathroom and while still comforting Kouryou-chan told me that Yamaarashi-chan was just trying to be involved, to get our attention. She didn't know what to do. I went and apologized to her, got her dinner for her, and explained that it was an emergency. "I know, but..." I said that in an emergency, if she wasn't part of it, the best thing to do was to get out of the way and let us fix the problem. We weren't ignoring her. There were just... other things happening.

Once the timer went off after ten minutes with the burn in the cool water, we dried her hand with a clean cloth and then wrapped it with sterile gauze and tape. And then Kouryou-chan and I were off to hospital.

We arrived at the emergency room at about 8:30pm with Kouryou-chan in good spirits. She had eaten her hotdog with her left hand while in the car and now clutched her little bear-shaped sippy-cup full of cranberry juice as we walked in. We met the admittance nurse, who then turned us over to the triage nurse, who took all the relevant details. I didn't know who Kouryou-chan's physician was, so I called Omaha on my cell phone, got the details-- all I had to do was mention the physician's last name and the triage nurse said, "Oh, I know who she is," and immediately wrote out the doctor's full name and phone number. We got her weight and recent medical history and all that. After I hung up, the triage nurse said something very peculiar. She looked right at Kouryou-chan and said, "You mommy and daddy love each other. That's wonderful."

My only guess is that she'd seen too much of the other possibility that night.

We went back to the admittance nurse, who went through the details of getting our insurance cards, address and phone numbers, whatever was needed to make sure that everything was paid for. We were then told to wait for a nurse to come get us and take us back to the examining room.

At first, Kouryou-chan was fascinated by the fish in the fish tank. I was grateful that she didn't want to go anywhere near the TV, which was showing the edited-for-television version of Con Air, hardly suitable fare for a child. She even went up and introduced me to two other little girls who were sitting with their father: "Hi, I'm Kouryou, and this is my best friend, Daddy."

But the pain in her hand caught up with her eventually. She whimpered at first, then crawled into my lap, wanted my finger to suck on. She much prefers that to a pacifier. It got worse, to the point where she was bawling in my arms, squirming desperately as she tried to find comfort from the pain. She wound up curled into a tight little ball in my lap. "Tickle me!" she demanded. This does not mean tickle her. It means stroke her skin, lightly, over her back and legs. She loves that feeling, and this time it did what she wanted it to. It knocked her out-- she was asleep in ten minutes.

Eventually, the admittance nurse led us back to an examining room, where I lay Kouryou-chan down on the stretcher. A nurse came in and made sure we were both comfortable, and then we waited.

And waited. And waited some more. It's a good thing I had my ebook reader in my pocket-- I carry it as a matter of habit, just one of those things I grab going out the door along with my phone, keys, and wallet. It must have been a while-- I ripped through about a hundred pages of Lois McMaster Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice while we waited. Good book.

The doctor arrived and assessed the damage at three centimeters long by a half centimeter wide, probably one-fifth of that second degree, and that she'd be fine. Then the bad news: I had to wake her up. Kouryou-chan does not like to be wakened from mid-sleep. She becomes the ugliest of personalities. But we had to get some codeine into her for the pain, or so the doctor recommended, and then bandage her hand. Bringing her back to wakefulness was horrible-- the pain must have been savage by then, and she doesn't like the experience of waking up as it is. But she drank it all and let us bandage her hand.

The physician also complimented me nicely on my knowledge of how to treat burns. "You did exactly the right thing. I wish more parents knew what to do." I chose not to tell her that my knowledge of treating burns came from the safety classes at a long-since defunct S&M educational forum, the chief organizer of which was a big fan of candle and flame play and knew all about treating inadvertent burns. That was so long time ago-- but it's nice to know the information finally had some use. We were given instructions, antibiotics, and wound dressings for five days. The doctor said, "She has such beautiful hands."

She cried most of the way home, and fell asleep in her mother's arms. Yamaarashi-chan apparently went to bed without complaint.

They've all gone to bed now. I can't sleep, though-- too much adrenaline, a bit of coffee at hospital, and now I'm wired. So I'm just gonna finish my dinner (cold cured pork with hot Chinese mustard and sesame seeds... yum!) and maybe take a bath, then see if I can get some sleep of my own.