Yesterday morning I actually folded laundry and took it into my room to put it away.  No sooner had I entered my bedroom than I heard the sound of a wailing child.  My son came running in to inform me that my daughter had hurt herself.  She came to me with tears streaming.  I checked her out to find a large scratch across her leg.  The whole leg in fact was scraped.  The most information I could get from her 2 year old self was "falled down."  My son was equally clueless.  Fearing a repeat, I searched around and tried to get the information out of my daughter.  What had caused such an injury?  It was still to no avail.  So I patched her up, gave her some magic kisses and we went on with our day.

It even crossed my mind as I was cleaning her injury, shuddering at the sight of the raw, red scratch, that it was a good thing she didn't injure her mouth.


See I have issues with the sight of blood.  I can't stand it.  It makes me sick.  It's literally painful.  I feel like someone is ripping my stomach out.  Especially when it's my kids who are injured.  When they are bleeding.  Most especially when they are bleeding from their mouths.  I can't handle it.  My husband and many times my sister-in-law, when present, have to take over.  It might just be a bit tongue.  Everyone knows that if the kids start bleeding, and even more so, if the kids start bleeding from the mouth, to get me away.

The thought went through my head that I truly didn't know what I would do if the injury had been to her mouth.

Later in the day I was in the living room.  I was trying to convince the kids to pick up their toys and put them in their room.  My daughter came over to me to show me something.  I looked at it and told her to take it to her room.

She skipped off happily.

Until she met the step.

We have a sunken living room.

She tripped on the step and fell forward.  With her hands full she didn't catch herself.  I didn't see her hit her face but she might have.  She started crying and I went to pick her up and comfort her.  She couldn't have hurt herself that badly.

That's when I saw the blood.

The blood that was POURING from her MOUTH.

I FLIPPED OUT.

I don't know who was squealing more at that moment.  I scooped her up and started running for the bathroom.  Then I turned around and darted towards the phone.  Then back towards the bathroom.  It's kind of a fog but I'm pretty sure I was running around in circles for a minute.  All I could think was BLOOD.  BLOOD from her MOUTH.  SO MUCH BLOOD.  Pouring out of her MOUTH.

I finally got her to the sink.  I started to try to wash all the blood off her mouth.  It was down her chin and on her clothes.  Her mouth was FULL of BLOOD.  I was trying to get her to spit it out but it kept pooling back up.  I wiped her mouth down as best as I could.  I realized washing her mouth out wasn't helping because there was way too much blood.  Images of missing teeth or bits of her tongue bitten off are flashing through my head.  All the while she is screaming.  So I shift my focus.  I have to calm her down.  The blood has to stop before I can find the source.  This meant I had to calm down first.  That was harder than calming her.  Finally I was able to hold her and keep a wipee up to her mouth to stop more blood from flowing out.  I could hear her swallowing mouthfuls of BLOOD.  I wanted to vomit.  I wanted to cry.  I was shaking so hard I could barely walk.  As we walked out of the bathroom I looked down.  There was a trail of blood across the bathroom floor.

We went to the living room and cuddled on the couch.  After what seemed like an eternity she was calm.  Her gulps had stopped so I assumed the blood was no longer flowing.  She calmed down enough to allow me to see inside her mouth.  What I saw nearly sent me right over the edge again.  She had bit the inside of her cheek.  I saw two long bleeding gashes.  Both were nearly as long as her cheek.  They looked deep.  Like she might have bit straight through.

Ice?  Shouldn't I put something cold on it?  Will she let me?  She probably won't even drink something cold right now.  We don't have any Popsicles or anything.  All these thoughts flashed through my head.

My poor little chipmunk cheeked princess.

I still wasn't over my panic.  Her cheek was bright red and swollen to twice it's normal size.  I wanted to call my sister-in-law and have her come over to look but I knew she was still at work.  I called my husband.  On the verge of tears I babbled out what had happened.  He echoed my thoughts of giving her something cold.  "Give her some ice cream."

"We do have ice cream!"  She wouldn't turn down ice cream.  So I scooped her up a bowl along with my son, who at this point thinks we are having a party.  She sat and ate sweetly.

As she was eating I got the call from the home warranty service to notify me a plumber was on his way to inspect our gas line.  He arrived minutes later and I explained the gas line situation.  He informed me that he needs a permit to get the gas turned back on so he can test it to find the leak.  Note I had told the warranty service that the gas was off.  He called the warranty service to notify them of the situation.  The same situation I had explained to them when I called initially.  They of course don't cover the fee to pull the permit.  So $255 later and the plumber leaves.  His office will call tomorrow to schedule the test.  $255 just to allow them to test it.  To find out how much it may or may not cost us, if the warranty company covers or does not cover the repair.  This does not bode well.

All of this was really too much for me to process at the time because my focus was still on my daughter.

The rest of the day I was on edge.  I was so afraid she would fall and land right on the same cheek she had already injured.  Maybe it was because I was so on edge and watching their every move but both kids seemed so much clumsier than usual.  Every little trip or bump elicited a gasp from me.

I still couldn't stop shaking hours later.  The kids and I found ourselves in my bedroom.  I'm not even sure how or why.  Mostly I think because I was trying to shelter her from further injury.  We were all sitting on my bed watching Cars.  My daughter was playing with an old broken "flip" cell phone.

I blink.

I hear a click and a thud.

My son starts screaming.

What happened?!

She threw the phone at his head and hit him in the eye.  The welt starts to form as I am checking it.  I kid you not that boy has a shiner.

Ok, maybe not a full blown black eye but a good little welt.

Injuries for the day.  Daughter with scrape on her leg & cheek the size of a baseball (ok maybe golf ball but she is a tiny girl) and son with a knot under his eye.

When my husband got home a few minutes later I just wanted to collapse into a little heap and cry.  Really I wanted to take a long hot shower (my escape from the world) but without hot water that was out.  I ended up curled up in bed while everyone finished watching Cars.  I even drifted off for a moment.

Crash.

Where did she go?!

I hear the wail.

Then the pause.  The pause of a child hurt so bad they can't catch their breath to cry.

My husband and I are both running.

She had gone back to the living room and had been sitting in her chair.  She had been tipping it forward.  I had been getting on her all day for the same thing.

Of course she fell.

She was holding her cheek.

No blood.

She must have just bumped the same cheek and because of the previous injury she was in pain again.

At this point my husband illustrated the difference between how we handle such situations.  He wanted to see the injury.  To see how bad it was.  She wouldn't let him look in her mouth.  I would probably have let her calm down a little and then tried again.  He held her down and with a flashlight in his hand, forced her mouth open to look.  "What is that big white thing in her mouth?"  "That would be the skin she chewed through on her cheek."  I curl up with her again on the couch to calm her down and he goes out to get more ice cream.  As he walks out the door she jumps up and runs after him.  He takes her with him.  She has forgiven him.  I think the word ice cream helped.

End of injuries for the day.  She never even ate her second bowl of ice cream.  When they got back she sat down to eat her dinner.  Drank a cup of milk.  Came over to me and said "tired, bed."

It was one of those days when I really wanted to just wrap my kids up in bubble wrap.  I just felt so defeated and horrible that I couldn't protect them from those injuries and I was so inept at dealing with them when they arose.  It looks like my kids have been in a fist fight or something.  Ugh!

In all honesty the scratch on the leg and the bump on the eye would probably be little normal kid nothings if they hadn't been added right on top of the BLEEDING FROM THE MOUTH.

Oh, by the way.  My dad wanted me to be a nurse.

Ha!