You Should See the Other Guy!

I had such plans for Monday. I was all set to wash all the girls' clothes and get in and pack up their room, leaving out ONLY the essentials for the next two weeks.

Then I didn't have to work, so I slept in.

Then the kids got up and wanted to go play.

Then I had a lady coming to look at/take my computer desk.

I broke down and let my 10 yr old daughter go out to play, since she'd asked me about a dozen times that morning. The other kids I assigned various chores while I cleaned off the desk and thought about doing some laundry.

Then I heard people on the stairs. Trust me, where I live, you can hear people come up your stairs to the front door. Knock, knock. I thought I heard sobbing.

I opened the door. Supported by a friend so young she only comes up to her chest, was my daughter. She was crying, and no wonder. She had a large gash in her forehead about an inch above her left eye, and blood seeping down her face. She'd already gotten blood on her pants and shirt. She was hysterical.

Fortunately, I'm not a panicky type of person. I tend to deal with what's going on and react later. It happened when I pulled a dog out of the drainage canal in Phoenix. It was the same when I was robbed at gunpoint. It was the same Monday.

I took her inside, yelled for my husband (still in bed--his day off). Had her sit on the couch. Grabbed some baby wipes to wipe off her face so I could see the damage for myself. Hubby comes out, and by then I was able to relay to him what my daughter said happened to her.

"She got hit in the head with a golf club."

There's something you don't say every day.

The cut was not long, but was deep and would require stitches. My daughter had calmed down enough that she could speak coherently, and as my hubby got dressed I got her ready to take down to the ER. Then I had a thought. Maybe the Dr could just do it in his office? So I called. Yes, he can. Great. I just knocked our $125 ER visit copay down to a $20 office visit copay. Looking back, that was incredibly logical and detached to even have that thought. Weird.

We took her down together, leaving the other kids at home with the 14 yr old in charge. Usually we leave a phone, but didn't. On the way to the Dr's office, we took pics of her wound with our phones and let her call her big sister--who had survived her own share of head wounds and could commiserate.

When the Dr saw my husband, he called us back immediately (particularly after we told him why we were there) and put us in a room. I think he didn't want my daughter scaring the other patients. It is a pediatric practice, after all. It took some time to get it all taken care of, but my little girl was a champ through the whole thing.

Then my dear hubby said, "I'm just glad he didn't hit her an inch lower and slightly to the left."

Her eye. A fraction of a difference in what happened, and she'd have lost her eye.

I glared at him a little. "Gee, thanks." That lovely thought hadn't even occurred to me. Other would hit me later.

Had the hit been any harder, she could have cracked her skull. The blow could have killed her (though likely not by a 10 yr old boy).

She was just playing outside. They weren't even fighting; they were getting along. Playing golf. She'd hit the ball the farthest, and he wanted to match her hit, so he swung hard--and she leaned in for a better view at just the wrong moment. Wham.

Four stitches and hours later, she's okay. Her head is tender, especially now that all the lidocain has worn off, so I gave her some Tylenol and sent her to bed. It's her 2nd dose. She has shown absolutely no ill effects from her ordeal, other than some lingering pain. She never lost consciousness; she never got dizzy or showed any kind of impairment.

(But, of course, everyone has a story of someone who was perfectly fine just after an accident and dropped dead a few days later. And of course I'm thinking about that, and watching her, and not looking forward to a great deal of sleep.)

The thing is, it was an accident. I KNOW it was an accident, and I'm not angry, really. But I'm having a hard time processing this. And it's really bothering me. I just want to hold her, and hold her, and hold her. I'm so grateful she's okay, but I'm still kind of tense and freaked out. It's taking me a long time to come down from everything that happened.

She is going to have a sweet scar, though. It probably won't show much in a year or two, but for a while it will look really cool. And, if it ever bothers her, she can just grow her bangs out again.