The Saga of the Thorn ends at last

Mother's Day last week was quite a busy day. It was also Marty's 9th birthday. It took 9 years for her birthday to fall on the Sunday to be able to share Mother's Day. Whenever it came up before, Leap Year skipped right on over it. So that was fun.

Party at Grandma's was fun, too. Except for the hurting part. It was the usual--tons of crazy kids running wild all over. But then there was screaming, and Linda was carried inside. She hadn't put her shoes back on after jumping on the trampoline, and was viciously attacked by wicked thorns off the neighbor's thorn trees. I pulled out one thorn from the side of her heel--a big sucker about 1/2 inch or more long. In the middle of the arch on that same foot, there was an obvious puncture, but there wasn't an obvious end to pull out right away. The other foot also had been poked, but just enough to leave a drop of blood--nothing stuck in there. Terry and Jeff tried to get the remaining thorn out (I'm way too squeamish to go digging around in my poor baby's foot for splinters), and they thought they'd pulled out most of it, with the chance that there might be a small sliver broken off, so we figured we'd watch it.

Monday morning, I checked the foot and it seemed okay--not red or swollen at all. Linda cried at having to walk, but I figured my foot would hurt, too, after having people poking at it for half an hour. So we tried to keep a normal day, and Linda figured out a sort of hobbly walk that didn't hurt too bad. But when I checked at the end of the day, her whole foot was bright red, swollen and hard--as though she were walking on an egg.

So Tuesday, Terry and Linda each got a day off, and we took her in to the doctor. By that time, the swelling had gone down a little from the previous night (probably because we had stopped making her walk on it, poor chica), but it was still too swollen and tender to really do or see anything right then. So we got some antibiotics for the infection (really horrifyingly nasty stuff--whatever happened to the old yummy pink bubblegum stuff?) and were told to soak her feet in hot water 3 times a day to try and help loosen up whatever sliver was still in there and bring it out.

Now it's Sunday--a full week after the thorn attack. I was trying to work out a way to get a ride to the doctor again without having to make Terry take off another day of work (this one car thing is really starting to be a drag). But then Terry, checking her foot after the mid-day soaking, saw a little tiny black speck peeking out of the wound. Linda was not pleased with more "surgery" with needles and tweezers, but I tried to tell her how much better things would be once we just got it OUT for once and for all. Keep in mind that we were still thinking we were just dealing with a small piece of the broken tip. So imagine our surprise when Terry finally got a good grip on the thing with the tweezers and pulled it, and pulled it, and more and more kept coming out--another fully 1/2 inch of thorn that had been buried in my sweet baby girl's foot for a whole week! Yikes! Just thinking about it hours later, I'm still freaked out about it. I think my baby girl my be the bravest person ever. And she's so sweet and cheerful, that if it weren't for the fact that she was walking funny, you'd probably never have known she was hurt at all.

So yeah, I guess I don't win any "Mother of the Year" award for this past week--Linda wins all. I'm just glad it's all over now and she can finally get back to the business of getting better for real.