Eventful

The other day, I got off work early because the kids had an early release day from school. We were having a nice afternoon; Isak was out playing with his friends and Anja was sitting at the dining room table engaged in her favorite at-home pastime, making books. I was swinging serenely on my porch swing, reading my new book. B was sitting at the computer shopping for another frilly pink apron and recipes for quiche.

When what, to my wondering ears would appear but a piercing scream out of the quiet. I hear a lot of screams from Anja so that I can identify when she’s fighting with her brother, when she’s mad at us, when she’s hurt but not badly, and when there is something seriously wrong. This scream was one that fell under the category of “when there is something seriously wrong.”

I ran inside and saw her next to B with her finger out and wobbling on her knees jerking her finger back to her body. In the three steps from the door to B, I saw that there was a staple - in her finger. Like, IN. HER. FINGER. She had been stapling a book together and ran out of staples and went to put more staples in the stapler. Apparently, when she opened it, she put her finger under the output part and somehow managed to staple her finger.

We were able to calm her down but she would not let us touch her finger. We could look at it at a distance, say like maybe if we looked at her from down the hall. Anything closer than that sent her into a panic. B knew he could take it out without any problem but she wouldn’t have any of it. He couldn’t even hold her arm to steady her to be able to see how bad it was without her starting to panic again. We knew - obviously - we needed to get it out but this was posing a problem, with her panicking every time we came anywhere close to her. After a few minutes, she was able to be calm with it in to where I could actually talk to her, but again, any advance toward touching her sent her into a panic.

After close to an hour of it sitting in her finger, I finally gave her two options: let Pabbi take it out or we have to go to the hospital.

To the hospital we went. Where we walked in, she sat down, the nurse walked up and popped it out and we were on our way after a thorough handwashing, some gauze and a colorful makes-everything-better sticker.

During that hour, I had to take a picture for historical purposes - of course. And because it’s the kind of picture that might make some people squeamish, I won’t post it directly on here, but if you’re feeling brave, you can click here to see the picture.

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