Pain with the thousand teeth.
Sir William Watson
1858-1935, British Poet
It has been almost one full year since Little Sister's first and hopefully last experience with stitches. If she takes after her father (which she SO does) then this will not be the last of it. His mother jokes that they had a weekly standing appointment with the local ER when he was a wee lad.
Her story starts with a cruise ship wading pool. Big Sister called out to me and I swear my head was only turned for a moment. Another mother was actually sitting in the foot deep water right next to her and didn't see it happen either. The nearest clean object was a beach towel and after applying pressure, I peeled that back to see a large gaping wound. Nope, not good at all.
taken just moments before the accident
And so we were off to the infirmary which in itself was an adventure, you see, the swimming pool is located next to the buffet and it was dinnertime. I had to excuse myself through hoards of lined up people while clutching a bleeding, screaming, squirming, soaking wet preschooler. The first staffer I approached did not speak any English but a kind bystander saw our predicament and offered assistance.
He cleared the way to the elevator and we hopped aboard only to stop at EVERY SINGLE FLOOR while dinner-goers got on and off. I apologized to anyone who may have gotten Little Sister's blood all over their fancy footwear but really, the way she was thrashing and screaming, I'm amazed she didn't completely cover everyone within a 20 foot radius.
After the second elevator stop, I elected to get off and dash the rest of way down the 14 flights of stairs. I couldn't go very fast in flip flops + struggling to hold onto a wet child so my good Samaritan ran on ahead to let the medical personnel know of our situation. I know not what he said to the staff but they were waiting with the doors wide open and a four person escort into a treatment room.
It took 30 minutes to knock her out with a sedative and she woke up screaming with the first injection of local freezing. The doc elected to suture the inner layers and glue shut the outermost layer (less scarring this way). She practically had all the glue picked off within 24 hours and we were disembarking the ship the next day. I had visions of us sitting in a Disney neighbourhood walk-in clinic for re-suturing.
do it again.
*we later deducted that she was attempting to climb UP the swimming pool slide, slipped and drug her little chin down the slide.












































