Talia has been sick for a week. She had a terrible cold. Watery eyes, runny nose, sneesey, sore throat, nasty cough, fever... the works. It took her days to get over it. She was stuck in the house, when all she wanted to do was to go outside and play in the sunshine (the days it wasn't snowing of course.) Every time someone would leave, she would stand by the door and howl in this way that left you in no doubt at all that you were a terrible, heartless human being for leaving her behind.
Finally, finally, today she seemed to be feeling all better. She woke up in a good mood. I woke up in a fairly good mood. I did feel a little phlegmy (is that a word? Is now), but in high spirits. I thought, "What's for breakfast?" Cereal again? Perish the thought! Today was going to be a good day, and that meant a decent breakfast. Scrambled eggs. The girls love scrambled eggs. And... english muffins with honey. The only way to eat an english muffin is with honey. While I was getting the honey out, I thought, "Hey... honey-lemon drink. That will make my throat feel better." Brilliant. Usually I just mentally moan about this sort of thing. Do something about it, why don't ya? I put the kettle on. After a few moments, it started to rumble. I thought about taking it off, but changed my mind. "Let it get good and hot," I thought, "It may do more good that way or something." Talia climbed onto one of the little chairs in the dinning room, bouncing up and down in anticipation.
"AAAAHHHHH!" She yelled, pointing at each ingredient as I got it out for breakfast.
"I have to cook it first!" I told her. Try teaching patience to a 1-year-old.
The kettle started whistling and I took it off of the stove. I poured the steaming hot water into a mug, pre-prepared with honey and lemon juice. Perfect. "Petra, breakfast!" What luck! It had even coincided with a commercial break, the only chance in Hades of pulling Petra away from NickJR for something as trivial as food.
"I can't get up."
Never mind. I'll just get her. Usually, I make her do this sort of thing for herself, but why push it this morning? I went into the living room and turned off the TV. I was just picking Petra up when the screaming started. Inpatient for breakfast (Talia has never shared her sister's blase attitude towards food), Talia had gone over to the counter and for some inexplicable reason, instead of reaching for the plates of prepared food, had pulled the mug of boiling-hot water down onto herself.
Quickly, I unsnapped her onesie and pulled it off over her head. At first, she didn't seem to be badly hurt. She calmed down fairly quickly, and I thought I could just distract her with food. When I put her into the high chair, however, I saw the angry red skin with two blisters that she had pulled open. I panicked. I didn't know what to do. Should I take her to the hospital? Just try to treat it at home? I called her pediatrician's office and spoke to a nurse. When I mentioned that there were blisters and she had only just burned herself, she said to take her to the ER right away.
I wasn't even dressed yet! I dashed into the bedroom and pulled on the quickest looking dress and slip on shoes that I could find. Petra begged to get dressed, too, but I refused. "We have to go NOW." She just didn't get it. Four-year-olds have no concept of the word "Emergency".
The 20-minute drive to the hospital could not have taken any longer. Talia had stopped crying, but I couldn't stop worrying about how badly she might be hurt. We rushed into the hospital and, thank heavens, they took us right back to a room. The nurse had me put her directly into a sink and we put a wet washcloth onto her burns, the right side of her neck, and down over most of her chest. Periodically, the nurse would come back and pour more cold water over the washcloth, a process that infuriated her. She screamed and screamed, some thing that sounded way too much like, "I want Mama," to make me feel any less helpless. I kept the cloth on the burns, the only thing I could think to do to help. They gave her medicine and finally she calmed down. They put a lot of thick cream onto her burns and put gauze and a whole lot of bandages over the top to keep it on.
The sum total of it all is this--Talia has 2nd degree burns all over her chest. Fortunately, they said that we were really lucky--they don't seem to be bad. Now, we (I) just have to take her in every day for up to a week so that they can check the burns and make sure they don't get infected, remove any dead skin, and re-dress them. Fortunately, once we finally got home, she seemed to be in pretty good spirits. Moral to the story, kids? They actually know what they are talking about when they say not to leave hot things near the edges of counters. Oh, and no matter how well the day starts off, you can always end up in the emergency room.
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