Sunday, February 17, 2013

Doin' it wrong... with first aid

Everyone thinks their child is unique.  But on a couple of issues, mine is down right weird.
Like Band-Aids.  She's afraid of Band-Aids.

Less so now than when she was a toddler, but she still gets a little freaked out when she has an injury that might require parental attention.

A lot of kids, when they're small, will insist on a bandage for every little bump and scratch.  And they want you to buy the cartoon character bandages so they can be festive.  Not Hannah.  She had no interest in Dora or Backyardigan bandages when she was a munchkin, and actually applying a bandage to that child required a brief wrestling match.  Most small cuts and scrapes were left to the open air, on the premise that the emotional trauma of applying the bandage was far worse than the injury itself.  

Hannah is now 7, and tolerates a Band-Aid now and then for real injuries, but still isn't a big fan.  On Friday she was outside playing with a neighbor, when she slid down the side of one of the trees in the front yard.  She came in, looking contrite, to show me her injury.  Since she was playing with an actual friend (as opposed to her regular retinue of invisible ones), I figured she must be really hurt.  She doesn't abandon actual human playmates lightly.  She had found a scrap of the kind of fabric that sometimes is used to line camp-chairs or thermal windshield screens, and, for some reason, placed it over the rather mild abrasion on her rib cage.  The wound, on its own, really didn't require any attention to speak of, but the filthy scrap of fabric that she had applied to the broken skin was what concerned me.  I told her we would have to clean that up, and I sent her friend home, knowing that Hannah would be too frantic by the time we were done to want to play anymore.

Now comes the Keystone Cops portion of our story.

Hannah doesn't really like to be handled, as I mentioned in this post last summer.  So the idea of sitting still for me to douse her mild abrasion with hydrogen peroxide and Dermaplast spray was too anxiety provoking for Hannah, and she started backing away from me like I was holding a blow torch.  I tried to get her to sit on the couch, and she would briefly perch on the edge of the cushion, only to spring up, landing 2 feet away, every time I approached her with the brown plastic bottle of torture-liquid.  She was crying, and trying to convince me that the wound wasn't so bad, as well as trying to calm herself down with some cartoonish deep breaths.  I'm trying my best not to laugh, because Hannah is clearly distressed, but I'm losing the battle and I keep making that snorty nose laugh sound, which only upsets her further.  After about 10 minutes of what would surely have resulted in hyperventilation for most humans, I got Hannah to sit on a kitchen chair for a moment.  It occurred to me that the bottle of peroxide I was holding has a silicone seal that allows you to squeeze out just the amount you want, rather than the regular open-neck bottle that I'm used to.  So I decide I'll just squirt her with the stuff and be done with it.  From about a foot away from her I squeeze the bottle, shooting enough to make her scream at the contact with her broken skin, and to cause some to splash back and hit me in the eye.  Which hurt.  Kind of a lot.  Who knew?

Now Hannah is sobbing, and I am grumbling about my eye and holding my hands over my face.  Hannah then wants to know, between wails and sobs, if I'm okay.

The torture victim wants to check on the collateral injuries of the torturer.

I could not possibly love that kid more.