A Warning to Parents

Sometimes when you think your child is in great danger, the obvious just isn't so obvious. I'm not even sure how to start this story because it sounds so ridiculous.

One Sunday afternoon in December, Keyton and Joslyn were jumping on the trampoline. I was watching them from the kitchen while I loaded the dishwasher. I missed seeing Joslyn fall off the trampoline but heard her crying and went out to find her bleeding in three spots on her face. (It was later admitted that Keyton pushed her.) The cut on her forehead was bleeding the most so I cleaned that one first and put a bandaid on it. By the time I did that Rob came downstairs to see what was going on. He thought the cut by her eye looked bad enough to leave a scar and wanted to get something better than a bandaid, like a butterfly stitch. (Which I have never used but apparently his mom used them all the time.) So we load up everyone in the car and head to the nearest Walgreen's to patch up her eye. Rob runs into the store and comes back with liquid bandage.

I'm thinking, "Oh, that's a good idea. I'm glad he went in and not me. I probably would not have been so clever."

Joslyn is still buckled into her car seat so he tries to apply it straight from the tube onto the corner of her eye. She's holding still until the drops hit her face and then she turns away and rubs it with her hand. And now her eye is glued shut. Rob thinks she's going to lose her eyesight so he's yelling at me to find some water, which there usually is one or two water bottles in my car but of course not at this time. He tells me to run in and get someone.

I think, "Who? The cashier? It's probably a teenager! The pharmacist is all the way in the back of the store and what are they going to do? They don't treat injuries!"

I grab Keyton, tell Rob to take Joslyn to the bathroom and flush out her eye, and run back to the pharmacist. I show her the box and tell her I got it in my daughter's eye and she says, "Take her to urgent care."

She must have thought I was the biggest idiot in the world because I stood there for a second with a shocked look on my face. It was like in the movies when someone starts to freak out and someone else has to slap them. I couldn't believe we were acting so stupid! Urgent Care was a mile down the road from where we were. She was already buckled in her carseat. If we would have just jumped in the car and drove there right when it happened we would have already been there! When I think back on those moments, I get scared for my children. I don't know how I'm going to handle a more serious injury.

The doctor and nurses at the urgent care flushed her eye with water and got it open. I don't know who was traumatized more, Joslyn or Rob. He had to hold her while she screamed, "Daddy! No!"

She was in a pretty bad mood on Monday.

But she got her first doll out of it and she was back to normal by Tuesday.

And the moral of the story is, the doctor said don't use liquid bandage on kids ANYWHERE.