Arriving at home after work last night, I pulled the car into the carport. Before I could even turn the engine off, my ears were seared by a piercing, wailing howl, as 7M ran screaming out the back door of the house, followed closely by 6F. He was obviously in pain, and I tried to get him to calm down enough to tell me what had happened, to no avail. 6F finally explained that they had been making dinner - a ham roast - and, taking the pan out of the oven, 7M had spilled a bit of the liquid (mostly water, with a bit of grease) on his foot. So I quickly removed his hot-liquid-soaked sock, and ran him inside to get some cold water on his scalded foot, while he wailed the whole time. . .
(*sigh*)
It's always so nice to come home to the peaceful, happy bosom of my family, you know?
(And of course, yesterday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (one of those Catholic Holy Days of Obligation), which, for purposes of this story, meant that Molly was gone to church at the time. And after that, she had her Women's Group meeting, so I was kinda 'winging it on the fly'. . .)
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Once he got calmed down a bit, and the immediate, searing pain gave way to something a bit more endurable, we saw that he had sustained second-degree burns on two of his toes, and a small portion of the top of his foot. Which ain't gonna maim him for life, so that's good. But, in the immediate near-term, it still hurts like hell. And feet being what they are, associated with how we usually transport ourselves from one place to the next, the consequences of the injury sort-of radiate out. Just getting him comfortable enough to fall asleep last night was a project of more-than-modest proportions, involving duct-taping an ice-bag to his poor scalded foot.
And then this morning, we had the whole question of what to do with it, so 7M (who is well on the way to adopting as his personal motto, "Why Does This Stuff Keep Happening to Me?") could go to school. We finally settled on a fresh ice-bag, with a fresh batch of duct-tape, all wrapped in a towel, secured by more duct-tape. We retrieved a pair of crutches from the attic, and he was good to go.
Except that last night, we got our first snowfall of the season, and everything was a slushy, sloppy mess. So that, by the time 7M made his way up to the second-floor classroom, his improvised ice-bag/towel/sock/boot arrangement was soaked with black slop, and the school (understandably, I suppose), concerned about it getting infected, called Molly (who had one of her rare early-morning shifts of work) to come and pick him up. (I mean, don't these folks know that we've got a life beyond bouncing back and forth to pick up and drop off our kids?) (I'm kidding, in case anyone is wondering. . .)
(*sigh*)
So now the poor kid gets to go see the doctor this afternoon, and get a real dressing put on his injured foot, so perhaps he can play in the school band's Christmas concert tonight. But he's probably gonna have to miss his basketball game this weekend. . .
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La-la, how the life goes on. . .
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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7 comments:
Not good! Burns are so very painful. I hope he heals quickly. And this is why I've never encouraged my kids to use the oven.
Oh, very painful, indeed! Hope he's feeling better tonight. What you need is a good old fashioned snow day...of course, that may just be my willingness to pass our excess - and second snow day tomorrow - off on all of you!
Ouch. I'm hoping he heals fast, and gets to play in the concert. Good luck!
Ah the joys of parenthood. N recently burned his arm when he was helping me bake cookies. It was a small burn and not in nearly as bad a place as the foot, but it was painful enough that he played it up a great deal for days thereafter. (Amazingly enough, he found that eating a cookie would assuage the pain for a while. Not that I'm saying that you should offer 7M such an option, but you know, a cookie will treat many an injury.)
And that driving kids from hither to yon and back again? Yeah, that's tje job, along with being medic, cook, housekeeper, and tutor, just to name a few. :-)
And of course I meant "THE job" not "tje job." Oh how I wish I would proofread prior to posting. Sigh. . .
big ouch! and no fun for anyone involved.
for future reference allow me to suggest keeping a bottle of aloe vera gel in the kitchen. or else having a plant you can break a leaf off of. i am telling you that stuff make a huge difference in soothing burns and recovery time. really. the kids and i have had some doozy 2nd degree burns. the stuff works.
Cocotte - In retrospect, your no-oven approach makes a lot of sense. . .
faDKoG - All we got was a couple of lousy inches (of SNOW! I'm talkin' about SNOW!). Just enough to make the driving slippery, but not enough to close the schools. . .
Sailor - He did play in the concert. And very well, I might add. . .
Truey - I know I'm inviting the derisive ridicule of all the working moms out there, when I say that Molly has always handled this stuff very capably. But since she's started collecting paychecks in the last year or so, I've had to do more of it than ever before, and it's kinda stressful, y'know?
;)
Lime - We do have an aloe plant on the kitchen windowsill, for just such a contingency, and we've had many occasions to know how well it works.
But an 11-year-old boy who thinks he's about to die doesn't always think clearly. We did eventually squeeze some aloe juice on it, and I'm sure it helped. But I'm sure sooner would've been better. . .
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