That I have a medical degree.
- For instance, Saturday morning when I woke up feeling like crud, it was pretty easy to run a rapid strep screen at home on myself. Granted, that's not in the usual home first aid kit, but I've accumulated "stuff" over the years.
- Then when the test came up positive, it was pretty simple to just write my own prescription for good old fashioned amoxicillin. Not that I self-treat that much. But seriously -- on a Saturday, if I bugged my internist with this, even she would wonder why I just didn't write my own 'script. And she is way more conservative than I am in regards to antibiotics, etc.
- Although, I didn't really study veterinary medicine, I've picked up enough along the way; so that last weekend when Zoe the dog sliced her hind paw, I had a fairly good idea of what to do for canine first aid.
- Same deal when Brie the cat hurt her left eye. [And that one was ugly, even by my standards....]
But tonight really takes the cake.
Tabitha, being the "No Fear - Full Speed Ahead" kind of girl she is, has damaged herself in multiple varieties in the nearly 5 years we've had her. A few episodes that come to mind include:
- There was the time that Miss H & Miss E had to fireman-carry Tab home, as blood dripped from the abraded surface of her knee, down her leg, and soaked her sock & shoes.
- There was that time she slipped on a puddle in the girl's restroom at school, somehow slid into a stall and stopped when her arm slammed into the toilet base. [I actually got x-rays that time, because she was crying so hard I really couldn't tell if she'd broken anything or not.]
- There was the time in our master bath, when she went to show Michael how she could do a back layover. She over-extended, then fainted, and walloped her face into the tub surround on her way down to the floor. She spent the next week with a really ugly shiner and a concussion. And Michael spent at least 48 hours shell-shocked....
- Then one of my personal favorites was the time that Michael & I came around the corner and found her splayed out on the sidewalk. She'd decided to wear flip-flops to ride her bike. Hit a rock on the sidewalk. Lost her footing and slid. Then subsequently her toes ended up caught in the spokes of her front tire. [I did manage to render aid without saying "I told you so", but she's never questioned me since when I tell her to wear "real shoes"....] Total damage was lots of scrapes & bruises, a torn up toe, but no broken bones.
- Just a month or two ago, she was cleaning out her school notebook and held up her hand. As I looked up from washing dishes, I noticed that she was dripping blood on her papers. She noticed at about the same time and that's when she came un-glued. Turned out to be an extremely fierce paper-cut.
<Sigh>....Over time she's had lots of bruises, scrapes, etc. So far [knock on wood], no broken bones. But she really does not like the sight of blood. And she especially does not like the sight of her own blood.
Hence we come to tonight's episode....
At about 9:45pm, this very sad, wet, bedraggled Tabitha shuffles into my office, holding a white towel to her head and weeping. She holds the towel out to me and there's large areas of blood staining it. At that point she sniffles and managed to tell me that she fell getting out of the bathtub in her bathroom.
[An important detail, as she does not pick her things up off the floor, nor does she keep the floor dry while she bathes, so it's always a slip hazard. And don't worry -- I have mentioned this to her many times before....<sigh>....]
As I looked her over, I noted the large amount of bright red blood on her crown. I started dabbing it away with the towel, but couldn't really see where the bleeding was coming from. It took a few minutes to really get her cleaned up. At which point I discovered this was very superficial from a 1/16th inch scrape on her scalp. [Scalp wounds! Ughhh! They always look so bad.]
By this point she finally had told me what happened, and yet once again we were lucky to avoid the ER.
She was getting out of the tub while it was still full & very wet, stepped on a wet tile and slipped. At which point she fell backwards & bonked the top of her head on the point of the ceramic soap dish that's molded into the shower/bath surround.
Since she was complaining of a headache, and dizziness, and nausea- well she's likely got a concussion (Again!). So she got some tylenol and an icepack, and in a few minutes I'm going to go peek at her pupils....
At anyrate, I'm very glad she didn't go to Michael first, or I would have had two patients -- and I don't keep suturing supplies around the house....
Just another day of misadventures in my TAME world....
