Saturday, January 31, 2009

Acute Corneal Abrasion

Two nights ago, the girls snuck out of their bedroom to see what all the adults were doing. (We were watching Numbers.) I heard funny whispering noises, and glanced up the stairs, but I couldn't see anything. Then the bathroom light went on and I heard whimpering.
I went upstairs prepared to put the girls back in bed, and discovered Deborah in the bathroom crying. (Abigail had already made it down to the front door.)
Deborah was trying to be sneaky and she fell and scraped her eye. We gave her tylenol, a cold cloth and I held her for a long time. The next morning she was still crying, so I called our pediatrician who had us go to the emergency room. She has a bad scrape on her cornea. We've had to fight my little wild animal to get eye drops in her eyes every four hours since then.
Happy, happy, joy, joy.
The PA at the ER told us that corneal abrasions hurt so much that they typically give adults narcotics, but they can't give them to kids. So, we've got two kinds of eye drops and she's getting tylenol and ibuprofen round the clock. She's so sad!
I hate that she got such a profound lesson about obeying, but at the same time, she's the kind of kid that's got to learn the hard way... Seems that she always has to find out for herself... Parents would always prefer to prevent pain, but if that's the only way Deborah seems to be able to learn. I guess I should be thankful that her lesson was a scratch on her eye rather than getting run over by a car...
One of my worst mommy moments happened when we were traveling through Canada. I was 6 1/2 months pregnant with Abigail and we had a flat tire. We stopped in a little town to get the tire patched, and had a couple hours wait. Jake was talking to the mechanics, and I was watching Deborah. She started running into the street and would not stop. I was yelling at her, and she was so fast. And she was ignoring me. I couldn't run fast because I was so big. I couldn't get hold of her arm or clothes 'cuz my belly was in the way. I kept grabbing at her... Finally, I was able to get my toe in front of her in such a way that she tripped and fell. She got scratches on her hands and she was so sad. Wailed and wailed... I'm so thankful that she got those scratches rather than getting hit by a car...

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