Today's Lesson

When you have a child, you do every thing you can to keep them safe. You try to out think the train wrecks. You instill a sixth sense to avoid dangers. And sometimes, no matter what, it's not enough. Accidents happen. This morning, Una received 1st and 2nd degree burns on her left leg between her knee and her ankle. Ted was holding her when his thermos of boiling water knocked over and spilled onto her. He doesn't even know how it happened. Did he bump it? Did she? Point is, it spilled. Ted, of course, is mortified, and it was by far the most awful thing for all three of us to go through.

We immediately put ice and then ice packs on her leg. It was 7am, so we got our stuff together, wrapped her up, and drove to our urgent care. Weirdly, urgent care wasn't open and they told us we need to go to the ER on the other side of town which was not what you want to hear. But, just when i was about to lose complete faith in Kaiser, a supervisor took us over to Pediatrics and had a doctor do triage. Dr. Cohen was awfully sweet and reassured us that Una was going to be just fine. There were 2nd degree burns and it looked god-awful, but she was going to be fine. He sent us up to the ER at Dornbecker Children's Hospital so that we'd have the best care, as they didn't treat burns in Pediatrics. We made it up "the Hill" and did receive very good care. They gave Una some pain relief medication and a lovely young woman blew bubbles while they dressed the wounds. Una was so good. She hardly made a fuss. She was really very good through the whole ordeal and was remarkably calm for a 20 month old. She'd cry and look at her leg and say, "Oh, no! Oh, no!" We all felt a lot better once she had the bandages on, and Una fell asleep in the car for a good long nap as we went to 4 different pharmacies looking for her medication. Once we got home, she was definitely knocked down a notch, but basically back to her chirpy little self. She just wanted both of us with her. As the day went along, she got stronger. Even with more medicine that was supposed to make her drowsy, she seemed only to have more energy. She's a trooper, really.

As for mom and dad, we are both a bit traumatized. I just keep thinking, if this happened, how can we keep her safe? How are we going to do it? Well, we are going to do the best we can, that's for sure. However, it's also a reminder that as much as we'd always like to be in control, we simply are not. And that's a hard lesson to learn.